zerotoroot - My Journey to Becoming a Hacker

My Noobie Approach to Problem Solving - Suffering Guaranteed

3 months ago, I started my 90 day problem-solving challenge. The goal was to improve my programming as well as problem-solving skills by solving numerous challenges with increasing difficulty. I never thought I would have so much fun and suffer at the same time. It's been a blast. Let me

Hardware

Mechanical Keyboards - A Step in the Right Direction

A tweet by svbl on Twitter got me to look at mechanical keyboards. It was the one below. What mechanical keyboard do you use? Any recommendations? — Julius (@jkuhnregnier) September 28, 2019 Mechanical keyboards seemed quite promising and also much more intuitive than the ones I were currently using. After

Problem Solving

My 90 Day Problem-Solving Challenge

I suck at problem solving. Big time! I understand algorithms once somebody else has written them, but I can’t come up with the solution myself. In high school, my best friends seem to have been born with a problem solving and programming capacity that I still can only marvel

Steganography

How to Hide a Zip File in an Image

I recently stumbled upon this post about what you can all do with Python. It contained a couple of programs, with one of them hiding a zip file inside an image. Actually pretty basic, but it seemed interesting. So I played around with it for a while. I didn't know

DigitalOcean

An Idiot's Guide to Bruteforcing

The other day I found a password-protected zip file on an old hard drive. Seeing that it had an intruiging name, and that I didn't know the password, I told myself that this would be a good challenge to learn bruteforcing. Bruteforcing: The act of systematically checking every possible password

Server

Setup Script for Ubuntu Server on DigitalOcean

Lately, I've been using DigitalOcean a lot in order to follow projects, such as setting up an Elasticsearch instance, and to play around with technology in general. Once you create different droplets on a weekly basis, you pretty quickly get the feeling that you are doing the same things over

Learning

What 3 Years of Learning To Hack Taught Me

I truly love the hacking community. Yet, what I still don't understand is why we haven't gotten any closer at helping people to learn to hack. I have for the last 2-3 years been learning to hack, and believe I have tried almost every resource out there. And I have

Email

Fishing for a Phisher – An Email Tale

A couple of weeks ago, I got this email.

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What people never imagine

I think, that sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things no one can imagine. Joan Clarke, The Imitation Game

Basics

How to Track Someone's IP Address to a Geographical Location

How do you trace an IP address to a physical location? That's one question that recently entered my mind. Another question on the road to seeking answers...

Getting Started

Is it Important to Learn Programming to Become a Great Hacker?

This is a question that is often asked by beginners. And it is definitely valid. The answer is: Yes! Why? Hackers exploit Hacking is often about manipulating code into doing something they normally wouldn’t. You can’t do that, without understanding it first. To learn hacking, learn how stuff

macOS

Idiot Trial: Using a VPN Together with DNSCrypt

It feels painful sharing this. As this is one of those trials, where I hoped that it's not completely my fault, but in the end, it turns out that it is. In the last post I showed you how you can use DNSmasq and DNSCrypt together on a Mac. The

Basics

Basics: The Internet vs The World Wide Web

The path to becoming a hacker starts with the basics. You can't ignore them. Like the Internet. Few understand the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web, and what types of it exist. Let's freshen up our memory. The Internet - The Physical Infrastructure The Internet is what

macOS

Ultimate DNS Setup: How to Reduce, Secure & Encrypt DNS Traffic

Domain Name Service (DNS) is one of the building blocks of the Internet, yet people pay very little attention to it. Using it optimally, can help you run much much more faster but also more secure. In this tutorial, I will show you how to reduce your DNS queries and

macOS

How to Create a Bootable Debian USB Drive on MacOS

There are some things, which are more difficult than they initially seem. This is true for creating a bootable USB drive on Mac with a Linux distro on it. In this article, we will go through each step necessary to come out with a bootable Linux USB drive. Let's begin!

macOS

Hardening MacOS - Part 1

I have been for long having trouble optimizing my Mac. I optimized it for my own use. To install new programs and to secure them partially. But I always felt I scratched on the surface, not covering the essentials. This guide is about undoing that. It's about going deep and

Command Line

Pomodoro Timer for the Command Line

Recently I have been focused on learning more about the command line and I started wondering whether there is actually the option to use one technique I truly enjoy on the command line: the pomodoro technique. The idea behind it is to segment your work into 25 minute brackets and

Basics

Pasty Bins - How to Pipe Command Line Output to a Pastebin

Pastebins come in handy, when you need to share text or code quickly. For a hacker, it is even more useful to be able to directly share output from the command line to a pastebin. In this case, we will look at sprunge.us, which offers the simplest and most

Spotting 1,000+ Hacking Blogs in under 2 Hours

One of the many marks of hacking is being able and knowing how to find information quickly. Efficiently and effectively. For the start of this blog, I needed to research all the types of security blogs out there. I was never good at finding information of that sort quickly. This

Basics

Check me sum – What They Are and Why They Matter

The concept of a checksum is an important concept within cyber security. Grasping the idea behind it, I felt, would be a solid step towards establishing a good basic understanding of today’s IT landscape. So what is a checksum and how does it work? What is a Checksum? A

Basics

Metadata – The information you never wanted to share

Some of the worst accidents on the Internet happen due to silly mistakes. Such as leaving metadata within files when you shouldn’t. What is Metadata? Metadata can be best defined as Data that provides information about other data. According to Wikipedia Oftentimes this information is added by the software

Basics

Understanding and Changing Permissions in Linux

Understanding operating systems is impossible without understanding permissions. They are everywhere. They are needed everywhere. And once you understand how to alter them, you will be well on your way to comprehend the basics of today’s computers. Managing Permissions Viewing permissions on any Unix-based machine is simple. $ ls -l

Random

A Journey into Hacking…

It’s hard for me to say what started me on this journey. It’s like every great journey, at one point you just know you need to start. However, if I had to point at something I think it would be my curiosity. This post, this blog, this journey