How to Check Your Linux Version: os-release, uname and lsb_release

Ever wonder what Linux version is running on your machine? I commonly connect to friends’ machines, or to one of my servers, and I have no clue what’s on it. This can make a huge difference, as some distributions use apt, some use dnf or yum, and some use something else entirely. Luckily, there are a few commands that answer this in a second.

In this article, we’re going to cover /etc/os-release, uname, lsb_release, and hostnamectl.

Continue reading How to Check Your Linux Version: os-release, uname and lsb_release

Undocumented APIs

Because I always love to push the envelope, and love learning how different services work in the background, I find myself running into undocumented APIs fairly regularly. Through writing many random bots, I’ve come up with a pretty nice workflow for handling, and documenting these APIs.

This article is going to cover how I typically go about the endeavor of documenting unknown APIs.

Continue reading Undocumented APIs

OverTheWire Bandit Part 2

In my last post, I walked us through connecting to OverTheWire’s Bandit server, and completing level 0 and level 1. Following along with the previous article is a prerequisite to following this article, as you’ll need to get the password from the file in level 1 first.

You can view my last post about this by following this link.

Continue reading OverTheWire Bandit Part 2

OverTheWire Bandit Part 1

OverTheWire is a website with two games. One is “Wargames”, which is a level based game, the other game is “Warzone”, which is more of a free-for-all hacking game.

In this series of articles, I’m going to give a walkthrough of how to complete the “Bandit” series of levels on their website.

Continue reading OverTheWire Bandit Part 1

Hack The Box Intro

Hack The Box is a website that gives people a great place to test their penetration testing (hacking) skills. They have a selection of different machines available that are vulnerable to different types of attacks. This site uses the capture the flag scoring mechanism, where you hack machines, get a “flag” from them, and submit it to their site for points.

In this article, I’ll cover how to make an account on HTB.

Continue reading Hack The Box Intro