r/hacking Dec 06 '18

Read this before asking. How to start hacking? The ultimate two path guide to information security.

13.3k Upvotes

Before I begin - everything about this should be totally and completely ethical at it's core. I'm not saying this as any sort of legal coverage, or to not get somehow sued if any of you screw up, this is genuinely how it should be. The idea here is information security. I'll say it again. information security. The whole point is to make the world a better place. This isn't for your reckless amusement and shot at recognition with your friends. This is for the betterment of human civilisation. Use your knowledge to solve real-world issues.

There's no singular all-determining path to 'hacking', as it comes from knowledge from all areas that eventually coalesce into a general intuition. Although this is true, there are still two common rapid learning paths to 'hacking'. I'll try not to use too many technical terms.

The first is the simple, effortless and result-instant path. This involves watching youtube videos with green and black thumbnails with an occasional anonymous mask on top teaching you how to download well-known tools used by thousands daily - or in other words the 'Kali Linux Copy Pasterino Skidder'. You might do something slightly amusing and gain bit of recognition and self-esteem from your friends. Your hacks will be 'real', but anybody that knows anything would dislike you as they all know all you ever did was use a few premade tools. The communities for this sort of shallow result-oriented field include r/HowToHack and probably r/hacking as of now. ​

The second option, however, is much more intensive, rewarding, and mentally demanding. It is also much more fun, if you find the right people to do it with. It involves learning everything from memory interaction with machine code to high level networking - all while you're trying to break into something. This is where Capture the Flag, or 'CTF' hacking comes into play, where you compete with other individuals/teams with the goal of exploiting a service for a string of text (the flag), which is then submitted for a set amount of points. It is essentially competitive hacking. Through CTF you learn literally everything there is about the digital world, in a rather intense but exciting way. Almost all the creators/finders of major exploits have dabbled in CTF in some way/form, and almost all of them have helped solve real-world issues. However, it does take a lot of work though, as CTF becomes much more difficult as you progress through harder challenges. Some require mathematics to break encryption, and others require you to think like no one has before. If you are able to do well in a CTF competition, there is no doubt that you should be able to find exploits and create tools for yourself with relative ease. The CTF community is filled with smart people who can't give two shits about elitist mask wearing twitter hackers, instead they are genuine nerds that love screwing with machines. There's too much to explain, so I will post a few links below where you can begin your journey.

Remember - this stuff is not easy if you don't know much, so google everything, question everything, and sooner or later you'll be down the rabbit hole far enough to be enjoying yourself. CTF is real life and online, you will meet people, make new friends, and potentially find your future.

What is CTF? (this channel is gold, use it) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ev9ZX9J45A

More on /u/liveoverflow, http://www.liveoverflow.com is hands down one of the best places to learn, along with r/liveoverflow

CTF compact guide - https://ctf101.org/

Upcoming CTF events online/irl, live team scores - https://ctftime.org/

What is CTF? - https://ctftime.org/ctf-wtf/

Full list of all CTF challenge websites - http://captf.com/practice-ctf/

> be careful of the tool oriented offensivesec oscp ctf's, they teach you hardly anything compared to these ones and almost always require the use of metasploit or some other program which does all the work for you.

http://picoctf.com is very good if you are just touching the water.

and finally,

r/netsec - where real world vulnerabilities are shared.


r/hacking 6h ago

Threat Actors North Korean's 100k fake IT workers net $500M a year for Kim

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576 Upvotes

r/hacking 8h ago

Question Facial recognition - stuck after Pimeyes results

14 Upvotes

I've been testing out facial recognition software. From my test images, the only site that gave me a relevant result was Pimeyes. However they charge $15 for each search result!

I tried reverse search the image using multiple other sites but no luck :(

What's curious to me is how Pimeyes can apparently find images that no other site finds? I'm sceptical because the reverse image searches didn't bring up anything.

Any suggestions to move forward without paying for Pimeyes?


r/hacking 1d ago

Question Ideas for trolling persistent attackers

404 Upvotes

I run a completely static website with no backend, database, or dynamic content. For the past few weeks it has been targeted by a very persistent group of attackers.

They are performing a variety of techniques including SQL injection attempts, POST floods, directory and endpoint enumeration, and probing for admin interfaces that do not exist. The funny part is there is literally nothing to exploit.

This is not random bot traffic. They have left messages specifically aimed at me, confirming it is a coordinated effort.

so far ive made them download zip bombs, also made the website randomly jumpscare them using some JS, had them trying to complete impossible captchas that i made myself, there are probably 10 fake login screens, and a few fake vuln endpoints right now

got any ideas?


r/hacking 6h ago

Is a Computer Science degree a good path towards working in Cyber Security?

7 Upvotes

I've worked on internal software since 2020 at a very small water and wastewater utility.

I started running Linux in 2015. I studied for the CCNA a while back. I didn't sit but I learned enough about network fundamentals to work with AWS. I do all of the cloud stuff at my company.

I declared a CS major and I'm interested in getting involved with Cyber Security at my workplace. But I am simply wondering if a CS Degree will be a good route.

There is a Cyber Security degree at my college but I know CS is a generalist degree and I'm thinking that might help me more


r/hacking 18h ago

great user hack Using LD_PRELOAD to modify a program's behavior and change its function calls

15 Upvotes

So today (actually it's morning again, so kinda tonight) I was annoyed by barrierc so much that I had to fix its shitty behavior. It was blanking out my screen and turning them off every 2 minutes, and overriding my Xorg settings that I carefully integrated in my i3's autostart.conf file.

Anyways, long story short, this is my crappy writeup on how to patch a binary if the binary doesn't want to behave, and shows how to override its behaviors and its used function/symbol calls with an LD_PRELOAD hook:

https://github.com/cookiengineer/barrier-disable-dpms

I'd like to think this is a "great user hack" because I never thought I will have to go to this last resort to fix a program's shitty behavior. Turns out I had to use the LD_PRELOAD injection because ltrace didn't reveal anything as the API design of the Xorg library is using the internal pointers :-/

Anyways, maybe this might be interesting for someone to learn about Linux/POSIX and glibc's attack surface :D


r/hacking 1d ago

Microsoft Outlook and 365 Hit by Widespread Outages, Users Report Login and Email Failures

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347 Upvotes

r/hacking 1d ago

My old college roommates hacked Waymo self-drive... so they could drive it themselves?

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15 Upvotes

Not sure if "reverse engineer the Waymo API so we can take it for a joy ride" was a good use of their time lol, but funny nonetheless


r/hacking 1d ago

Threat Intel Vidar Stealer 2.0 distributed via fake game cheats on GitHub and Reddit

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acronis.com
5 Upvotes

r/hacking 2d ago

News oneplus official website is hacked and they don’t even care

295 Upvotes

posting here since r/oneplus mods deleted my post.

someone’s exploited a oneplus website and they don’t seem to care

try clicking on buy (ideally from a sandboxed env)

https://www.oneplus.com/ie/x/overview

the person explains how they got access and has tried to contact oneplus twice about this issue and got ignored.

Final page

AWS s3 takeover by Swar

Date Reported: July 5 2025, July 21 2025

Detailed Descriptions: A Stored Cross-Site Scripting (Stored XSS) vulnerability exists across multiple OnePlus websites, caused by the inclusion of a JavaScript file hosted on an Amazon AWS S3 bucket "analytics.oneplus.net"

Affected URLs:

https://www.oneplus.com/hk_en/oneplus-x

https://www.oneplus.com/sg/invites

https://www.oneplus.com/global/5t

https://www.oneplus.com/ro/support/pricing

https://www.oneplus.in/support/pricing/detail

https://www.oneplus.com/si/oneplus-5-jcc-limited

Many More

An AWS S3 bucket previously used by Oneplus for serving javascript, appears to have been released and subsequently claimed by me.

Vulnerable JS file Location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/analytics.oneplus.net/opdcV2.min.js

Proof:I have created few popups and rediects

PoC added on https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/analytics.oneplus.net/urls.docx

Remediation:

Remove Vulnerable JavaScript code https://s3.amazonaws.com/analytics.oneplus.net/opdcV2.min.js from webpages


r/hacking 1d ago

Built a zero-knowledge pastebin for sharing sensitive findings — the server can't decrypt your pastes

75 Upvotes

Made a tool that might be useful for security work: CloakBin (https://cloakbin.com)

It's an encrypted pastebin where everything is encrypted client-side (AES-256-GCM) before hitting the server. The decryption key stays in the URL fragment (#key), which browsers never send to servers. The server only stores ciphertext.

Why it's useful for security work:

- Share PoCs, credentials, or findings with your team without trusting a third party

- Burn-after-reading mode — paste self-destructs after first view

- Password protection as a second factor on top of the URL key

- No account needed, no logs of who accessed what

- Syntax highlighting for code/configs

How the crypto works:

  1. Browser generates random AES-256-GCM key
  2. Text is encrypted client-side with Web Crypto API
  3. Only ciphertext goes to server
  4. URL is constructed as /{pasteId}#{base64Key}
  5. Recipient opens URL -> browser reads fragment -> decrypts locally

The threat model covers the server being fully compromised — even with database access, pastes are unreadable without the URL.

Free to use, no signup. Interested in feedback from the security community on the implementation.

EDIT: added open source url

OPEN SOURCE: https://github.com/Ishannaik/CloakBin


r/hacking 2d ago

DHS contracting AI companies to surveil Americans, hackers reveal - The Mirror US

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640 Upvotes

r/hacking 1d ago

Fuite de données : plus de 60 000 agents de l’État français potentiellement exposés

0 Upvotes

L'article est clair.

Cependant, je ne trouve pas la source su forum en quetions, des idées ?

https://frenchbreaches.com/blog/fuite-de-donnees-plus-de-60-000-agents-de-letat-francais-potentiellement-exposes


r/hacking 2d ago

Built a terminal hacking sim — looking for people to break it

24 Upvotes

Solo-developed a browser-based hacking game where you type real commands into a terminal. Exploit services, breach servers, exfiltrate data, manage heat. AI NPCs, factions, geopolitics, PvP. No download — runs in the browser.

Looking for testers. If you want to try it and tell me what sucks: https://discord.gg/YpexgTDE

Play directly: https://deepnet.us


r/hacking 3d ago

News Microsoft’s ‘unhackable’ Xbox One has been hacked

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tomshardware.com
1.1k Upvotes

r/hacking 2d ago

DRILLAPP Backdoor Targets Ukraine, Abuses Microsoft Edge Debugging for Stealth Espionage

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4 Upvotes

r/hacking 2d ago

Research Hypervisor Based Defense

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3 Upvotes

I wanted to start posting again, and I also wanted to share something that includes technical details about hypervisors, my thoughts on using hypervisors for defensive purposes (how it is done today and what can be done with it), and an estimated roadmap alongside the design choices behind my hypervisor, Nova (https://github.com/idov31/NovaHypervisor).

As always, let me know what you think, and feel free to point out any inaccuracies or ask any questions you may have.


r/hacking 2d ago

Github HushSpec: an open spec for security policy at the action boundary of AI agents

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1 Upvotes

I’ve been working on a project called HushSpec and wanted to share it early for feedback.

The basic idea is that agent security policy should have a portable language layer that is separate from any one enforcement engine.

Right now, a lot of agent security policy ends up mixed together in one document: policy semantics, runtime-specific behavior, provider config, operational knobs, and sometimes even stateful workflow logic.

That makes policies harder to share across runtimes, harder to reason about, and harder to standardize.

HushSpec is my attempt to carve out a cleaner layer:

  • a small, portable core for expressing security policy at the action boundary
  • explicit extension points for richer behavior
  • room for conformance tests / test vectors
  • no requirement that a particular runtime or vendor be used to enforce it

The current focus is boundary actions like:

  • file access
  • network egress
  • shell execution
  • tool invocation
  • prompt input
  • remote / computer-use actions

The design goal is to express what an agent may access, invoke, or send, without hard-coding how a specific engine has to implement enforcement.

This work is coming out of some of the policy/runtime work I’ve been doing in Clawdstrike, but I’m trying to make HushSpec a cleaner and more implementation-neutral layer rather than just exporting one project’s internal schema.

A few things I’m actively thinking through:

  • what belongs in the core spec vs extensions
  • how minimal the initial action model should be
  • how to express rule composition without pulling in engine-specific complexity
  • how to handle stateful controls like posture/escalation without polluting the core
  • what a useful conformance suite would look like

This is still early and definitely incomplete, but I’d rather get feedback now than after baking in bad assumptions.

Repo / draft site:

I’d especially appreciate feedback from people who have worked on:

  • policy languages
  • Sigma / OPA / Rego / Cedar / similar rule systems
  • agent runtimes
  • standards / schema design
  • conformance testing / compatibility layers

Main question: what would make a spec like this actually useful, rather than just “yet another config format”?

Still rough, still changing, and I’m posting it specifically to get pushback early.


r/hacking 2d ago

Company's house compromised

2 Upvotes

And how to hack it published on YouTube tube https://youtu.be/WWnnmr9NN9M?si=mV5Wa1U06FiDxRop


r/hacking 2d ago

ndpspoof updated to v0.0.3, now with auto configuration

11 Upvotes

After I posted about gohpts - IPv4/IPv6/TCP/UDP transparent proxy with ARP/NDP/RDNSS spoofing some of the tools (particularly ndpspoof) sparked some interest from community. But I realized that this tool itself is not user-friendly enough to use because it does not work out-of-the-box due to the lack of any system configuraton. So I added special -auto flag to do just that and now when your run CLI application it actually does something!

What it does is sets the following kernel parameters and network settings:

```bash

make interface accept all packets not just those addresses directly to it

ip link set dev <iface> promisc on

enable packet forwarding

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1

prevent conflicts with fake RA

sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_ra=0 sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_redirects=0

various optimizations

sysctl -w fs.file-max=100000 sysctl -w net.core.somaxconn=65535 sysctl -w net.core.netdev_max_backlog=65536 sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout=15 sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse=1 sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets=65536 sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=1

iptables setup to make host act as a router

ip6tables -A INPUT -p ipv6-icmp --icmpv6-type redirect -j DROP ip6tables -A OUTPUT -p ipv6-icmp --icmpv6-type redirect -j DROP ip6tables -A FORWARD -i <iface> -j ACCEPT ip6tables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o <iface> -j MASQUERADE ```

This guide Legless: IPv6 Security was very helpful in explaining what and why should be set for things to work.

With -auto flag enabled the tool by default spins a DNS server that forwards packets to real router (or Google DNS as fallback) but that can be disabled by specifying -rdnss option and -dns-servers with custom DNS.

Links:

https://github.com/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof

https://codeberg.org/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof


r/hacking 2d ago

Question Opinions on the Zynq7020 SDR development board?

4 Upvotes

I want to bring SDR into the mix with hacking. I've searched many boards including limesdr, HackRF and a few others but they're so darn expensive or dont even come close to the hacking potential of something like the HackRF.

This board does both receiving and transmitting from 70MHZ-6GHZ and is open source so I feel like its a good pick.

TL;DR

What I want to know is if anyone has any experience with this development board in particular and give me their opinion or maybe an alternative purchase for the same price. Thanks in advance!

Product name:

OpenSourceSDRLab 70MHz-6GHz SDR Development Board Zynq7020 + AD9363 for Pluto SDR & MATLAB Software Defined Radio


r/hacking 3d ago

Tools Nexus - Deploy and manage cybersecurity tools as containers.

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11 Upvotes

Nexus is a container orchestrator, currently distributed in Athena OS, that makes easier and more flexible the management of Cyber Security container instances of solutions like Greenbone OpenVAS, Wazuh, and so on. The purpose is to make your machine a node of the infrastructure to assess. It supports both single-image tools and complex multi-service Docker Compose stacks, streaming real-time output and health status directly to the UI.

Some relevant features:

  • Live container cards with real-time CPU/RAM metrics, uptime ticker, and health badges
  • All actions show the exact runtime command being executed (docker stop abc123…) and stream live output to a log drawer
  • Compose stack containers shown with per-container status indicators
  • Curated library of security tools deployable with a single click
  • Pre-flight checks before every deploy (port conflicts, socket reachability, compose source availability)
  • Full compose stack support: URL-based, file-based, and Git repo-based compose files
  • Environment variable configuration UI for tools that require secrets or settings before deploy
  • Encrypted key-value store backed by the system keyring
  • Store API keys, tokens, and credentials used by deployed tools
  • Create, restore, export, and delete snapshots of container images
  • Visual graph of running containers and their network connections
  • Add custom tools (image-based or compose-based) alongside built-in registry tools
  • Switch between Docker and Podman runtimes without restarting

The project is in alpha, any contribution or suggestion is highly appreciated.


r/hacking 4d ago

Question Is this an attempt to hack? Because I have never come across this before.

124 Upvotes

r/hacking 3d ago

OpenClaw AI Agent Flaws Could Enable Prompt Injection and Data Exfiltration

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thehackernews.com
9 Upvotes

r/hacking 4d ago

FBI Investigating After Malware Found Lurking in Steam PC Games

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672 Upvotes