Spy

Welcome back, my rookie hackers! Now that nearly everyone and everyplace has a computer, you can use those remote computers for some good old "cloak and dagger" spying. No longer is spying something that only the CIA, NSA, KGB, and other intelligence agencies can do—you can l ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! As all you know by now, I'm loving this new show, Mr. Robot. Among the many things going for this innovative and captivating program is the realism of the hacking. I am using this series titled "The Hacks of Mr. Robot" to demonstrate the ha ...more

Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Have you ever had a neighbor that you're certain is up to no good? Maybe you've seen him moving packages in and out at all hours of the night? Maybe you've seen people go into his home and never come out? He seems like a creep and sometimes ...more

Wouldn't it be nice to just sit at your buddy's house, plug into his network, and see exactly what he's doing? What if it was as easy as that? What makes packet sniffers like Wireshark such potent tools is that a majority of local area networks (LANs) are based on the shared E ...more

So you want to know what that person who is always on their phone is up to? If you're on the same Wi-Fi network, it's as simple as opening Wireshark and configuring a few settings. We'll use the tool to decrypt WPA2 network traffic so we can spy on which applications a phone i ...more

If Detective Alonzo Harris from Training Day taught me anything, it's that "It's not what you know, it's what you can prove." So when items mysteriously go missing from my room or my section of the fridge, it's up to me to figure out and prove which roommate took them. I don' ...more

There are a ton of cool things you can do with your iPhone's camera in iOS 7, from taking burst photos to bouncing the camera open and taking nice parallax-friendly wallpapers. However, nothing tops the camera's super secret hidden feature—turning you into a spy photographer. ...more

In today's world of social media, there's really only two powerhouses—Facebook and Twitter. And those of you with Twitter accounts know the power of a Tweet. Getting more followers means reaching more people, but the vast majority of Tweeters are following only a handful of Tw ...more

When your computer first connects to a nework, it sends out a request on the network to lease an IP from the router. The router then leases your computer an unused IP address, which is used as a unique routing address for sending traffic that is meant for you, to you. As every ...more

In my Wireshark article, we talked a little bit about packet sniffing, but we focused more on the underlying protocols and models. Now, I'd like to dive right back into Wireshark and start stealing packets. The filtering capabilities here are very comprehensive. You can filte ...more

Want to find out if your neighbors are talking about you? You could always hack their webcam or turn your iPhone into a secret spy camera, but unless you have a key to their house, that could be tricky to do without getting caught. With this DIY parabolic microphone (archived ...more

Surveillance is always a useful tool in a hacker's arsenal, whether deployed offensively or defensively. Watching targets yourself isn't always practical, and traditional surveillance camera systems can be costly, lacking in capabilities, or both. Today, we will use motionEyeO ...more

Over the next few months, I'll be focusing on building a fully functional, long range UAV. This series will consist of several in-depth articles on my progress and the steps involved, so you can follow along and build your own unmanned aerial vehicle! The budget is $800 and w ...more

Eavesdropping from a distance can be tricky because it usually requires some sort of bug or transmitter. It's easy to transmit audio through lasers, but you can also use lasers to build a microphone that picks up audio from a distance. LucidScience built the Laser Spy System f ...more

With the purchase of my new Apple Watch, the days of striving to be a James Bond-like spy have never been closer to fruition. Granted, talking to your wrist in public can look pretty pretentious, and I may very rarely do it, but let's get real—you look like 007! Sadly there a ...more

Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! A short while ago, I started a new series called "How to Spy on Anyone." The idea behind this series is that computer hacking is increasingly being used in espionage and cyber warfare, as well as by private detectives and law enforcement t ...more

Sometimes, for whatever reason it may be, we just want to take a photo without anyone noticing. Unfortunately, thanks to the extremely large screen and loud shutter sound, taking a picture discreetly with our Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is a hard thing to do. This chick is so not o ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! Previously in my "Spy on Anyone" series, we used our hacking skills to turn a target's computer system into a bug to record conversations and found and downloaded confidential documents on someone's computer. In this tutorial, I will show you ...more

Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! In recent weeks, the revelation that the NSA has been spying on all of us has many people up in arms. I guess I take it all in stride as I just assume that the NSA is spying on all of us—all of the time. Don't get me wrong, I don't condone ...more

Is your smartphone eavesdropping on you? It's a question that will never go away because it's easy to envision hackers or malicious apps taking over your device to spy on conversations, snap photos, or even record video. But fewer people will be asking it, thanks to Android 12 ...more

Let's just say it's been a pretty bad year for spies and government agencies and an even worse one for the privacy of U.S. citizens. Edward Snowden blew the lid off the NSA's spy program, and the FBI was recently discovered to have the ability to access your webcam any time th ...more

The ESP32-CAM is a convenient little camera module with a lot of built-in power, and you can turn one into an inconspicuous spy camera to hide in any room. There's only one issue: it does omit a USB port. That makes it a little harder to program, but with an ESP32-based board, ...more

What started as an accessibility setting for hearing aids turned out to be a super helpful tool for anyone with a good set of Bluetooth headphones. The problem is that most iPhone and iPad users still don't know about it. If you're one of them, you need to see what this underr ...more

What if you could easily visualize which access point every Wi-Fi device nearby is connected to in a matter of seconds? While programs like Airodump-ng can intercept this wireless information, making it easy for hackers to use and understand is another challenge. Fortunately, ...more

Robert Templeman from the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana and several of his friends from Indiana University recently developed an Android application that is capable of gathering pictures and videos from mobile devices in order to reconstruct a user's environme ...more

Microsoft decided to give users a free upgrade to Windows 10 if they were previously running Windows 7 or 8—but it came with a catch. Their main motivation for knocking off over $100 from the normal going rate was to get more people using new Microsoft services like Cortana an ...more

There are spontaneous times in everyday life that just scream to be recorded on video. The crazy guy yelling obscenities on the bus. Your favorite actor at the supermarket check-out register. Maybe even your kids just being super adorable. Most people in those situations woul ...more

Frosted glass windows are meant for privacy, plain and simple. Sometimes you see it used for aesthetic effect, but primarily it's used to let a little light in while keeping wandering eyes out—unless those wandering eyes have some Scotch tape in their pocket. Yes, a mere piec ...more

Need to find some directions? No problem, use Google Maps. Want to find some spy photos of yourself? No problem, use Google Street View. Beginning in 2007, hordes of Google hybrid electric vehicles have stormed the streets, each equipped with multiple cameras attached to a la ...more

Looking to transmit some super-secret audio communications to your other spy buddies? A laser is the perfect tool for getting your sounds heard from a small distance—without anyone intercepting them— even if it's just a cover of your favorite pop song. A laser audio transmitte ...more

If you've recently built a Wi-Fi spy camera out of an ESP32-CAM, you can use it for a variety of things. A baby monitor at night, a security camera for catching package thieves, a hidden video streamer to catch someone going somewhere they shouldn't be — you could use it for p ...more

SSH, or the secure shell, is a way of controlling a computer remotely from a command-line interface. While the information exchanged in the SSH session is encrypted, it's easy to spy on an SSH session if you have access to the computer that's being logged in to. Using a tool c ...more

UC Berkeley (funded by DARPA) has created cyborg beetles guided wirelessly via laptop. These spy beetles were created with the intent of bugging actual conversations, literally acting as the "fly on the wall". The beetles range anywhere from 2 to 20 centimeters. From Daily Ma ...more

There's really nothing safe about transmitting sensitive information electronically, but even if it gets there safely without being seen by prying eyes, there's no guarantee what happens to it once it reaches its destination. And let's face it, there are some things that you j ...more

Beautifully designed, this glass globe doorknob bars all potentially private matters of what lie beyond it. Via Spoon Tamago: "In conjunction with Design Tide Tokyo, architect Hideyuki Nakayama - a protégé of Toyo Ito - has teamed up with UNION, a manufacturer of door handle ...more

Stumbling upon a specifically tailored advertisement on your iPhone can be a bit disconcerting. But that's what happens when you let advertisers track your data. Some of you may appreciate more relevant ads in apps, but the rest of you might consider it a straight-up privacy i ...more

While Apple's reputation for privacy and security is nearly unmatched, it'll never be perfect when Hey Siri is always listening. Aside from iOS devices, Hey Siri always listens for questions and commands on the HomePod and HomePod mini smart speakers. If you rarely use Hey Sir ...more

As you're surely aware, your phone can be used against you. Thanks to our cameras and microphones, a clever hacker can obtain access to your device and invade your privacy. But spying isn't limited to just these two sensors — gyroscopes, proximity sensors, QR codes, and even a ...more

Lady Gaga and Polaroid's upcoming Grey Label Camera Glasses can record video and snap pictures, but who really wants to show the world what they're up too on those mini LCD screens? It's nothing more than a fancy gimmick between a pop star and a failing company. Isn't the inte ...more