NMap Experiment: Using a Banner Grabbing Attack to Bypass a Load Balancer

Disclaimer: This article talks about port scanning and banner grabbing in NMap, which can be used as precursors to an online attack. This information is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not to be used for illegal hacking purposes. Disclosing vulnerabilities and exploits is protected by free speech laws, but using such information …

How to Transfer Files Over SSH on a Linux/Windows Network

In this tutorial I want to show you how to copy files from one computer to another on a network containing both Linux and Windows hosts, using the SSH protocol. Linux-to-Linux, Linux-to-Windows, and Windows-to-Linux file transfer can be accomplished with an SSH daemon running on one or more Linux hosts and/or a copy of Cygwin …

Running a VirtualBox VM in Bridged Networking Mode

I've been playing around with bridged mode in VirtualBox, trying to see how I can get it to work. Turns out it's fairly easy to do, so this article will be somewhat shorter than what I usually write. I just want to look at what I did to enable bridged networking in my VirtualBox VMs …

Before You Start Using a VPN, Read This

Use of VPNs has exploded in the last few years, pushed by increasing awareness of privacy issues among citizens as well as governments and corporations doubling down on their censorship and surveillance efforts. Now that we have AI capable of building frighteningly accurate psychological profiles of people based on their browsing habits, using a VPN …

Up and Running: Using the TunnelBear VPN Service Through OpenVPN

In this article I want to talk about one of my tech adventures from shortly after I went on vacation, which is that of getting OpenVPN up and running and using it to contact the TunnelBear servers. TunnelBear is a paid VPN service that provides both end-to-end VPN encryption and anonymous proxying, using AES-256 encryption …

The Ethernet Island

Let's face facts: Being in a group living situation sucks. Though to be fair, it sure beats having to take out a mortgage on a house you can't afford. One thing that has become a problem for me, being the digital control freak that I am and at the same time not living under my …

How to Block Websites and Prevent DNS Leaks Using Your hosts File

The hosts file is an entity that is present in every major operating system, including MacOS, Windows, and Linux. In Unix-based systems like Linux and MacOS its filepath is /etc/hosts. In Windows its filepath is C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. Although largely a relic of the past, this oft-ignored configuration file can be surprisingly useful even in the modern …