67 replies to this topic

[Newbie]

ok I saw one of you posted that all the real hackers are self thaught, I think it's not true, I mean I'm not a hacker, I want to be one, and I jsut started, I don't know any programming language, only thing I know is basics, and everyone started learning at age of 2-3 , before I readed it, i thought I was smart, because I could add 1000's and I was pretty good at it, and now I think that I rly sucked, well anyways I want to learn, and I will, one day I will be a HACKER! yeyy lol

[Dooms_day]

i think i started with scamming (social engineering) for passwords and stuff on IM and runescape, which i learned about tsearch then moved to cain and abel, then that opened up all kinds of shit, like nmap, nessus, linux, which led me to hackthissite.org which led me to application challenges and realistic challenges and metasploit and now im learning asm, mostly just the reverse engineering aspect of it, so i can fuzz and debug vulnerable services, then make my own exploits in metasploit and it delivers the payload cause its so 1337, and BAM!....did i mention i played runescape at one point in my life lol? also in there somewhere i made websites for people that were dynamic (php!) and tested that for all kinds of injection problems (POST and GET), also instead of cain, i just put in linux and overwrite the hashes in the SAM file with a nothing hash...lol who needs brute forcing when you have OVERWRITING!

by the way while i was in my hackthissite stage, i got these skiis labeled 1337 on a ski trip, i was like HOLY EFF cause i was just talkin in 1337 sp33k for so long then, omg the extacy was like doin a J turn in your moms car

Edited by Dooms_day, 01 May 2009 - 08:05 PM.

[Renegade]

For me it all started with "hacking" the password for my own pc back when I was around 10 or 11 years old.
My godfather donated me my first pc with an annoying timebased logon script which had a password to logon
outside the predefined times. The script was written in pure basic and did run without compiling. Therefore
the password was wirtten in plain text in the file (which was called something like logon.bas). This was not a
very big start, but it brought me into it. Shortly after I started learning basic for fun and, maybe 3 or 4 years
later, switched to Delphi. That helped me when we started programming at school another 3 or 4 years later,
but made it also very boring. So most of the time I coded more in VB.net (which was way more interesting
than the older versions), because I thought it was stupid to code in an extremly old version of Delphi (at least
they could have used Delphi .net or 7 instead of 4). Since that time the only thing beside coding I did was
testing the security of our school network, circumvent the printer authentication and tell our "admin" that
everything he changed to make the network safer made at least 2 new exploits possible...later he changed to
linux servers controlled by some pupils because he couldn't get along with it
Since I would not count the lessons at school as very informative to me, I count this as learnign by doing


Btw.:
@Dooms_day:
While reading your post I had a déjà vu...
I'm very sure that i have read that story some time ago.

//edit:
Your ski story found its way into my long-term memory *shit*
http://www.binrev.co...o...c=36991&hl=
Maybe you should stick to doing J turns in your moms car
And sometimes its better to get a password than to override it.
It's much less obvious and if the drive is encrypted it makes life much easier.
And not to forget the people who use only 1 or 2 passwords for everything on the net...

Edited by Renegade, 01 May 2009 - 09:09 PM.

[Sandolas]

How does a 2 year old hook up a computer and stay up to read manuals after their parents have gone to bed? I'm not trying to flame, but that seems very unlikely as most two year olds aren't even potty trained let alone reading computer manuals. I started learning by reading forums and ebooks mostly. That's how I still stay updated most of the time!

[tweeks]

I stumbled upon a BBS in 1984 called "The Screaming Electron" and from that time on i have been reading, listening, reading, writing, reading, oh and did i mention reading ? with quite a bit of practicing as well.

[-- Bikemech --]

I sort of started out by reading different articles on forums and off course used the all knowing page called "google"... From there i developed by reading books and started to learn some basic programing languages. Still think I know way to little and thats why I joined here, to expand the horizon of hacking and computing in general!

[BoogY]

I'm not really a hacker but I'm learning and I really really like it.
But sometimes is difficult to learn by yourself.

[TigerStyle]

Other, I don't know how to hack.

[Jagn]

well i started just last year i loved how much information was on the internet and you could basically learn anything you wanted, it started with online games and trainers then i wanted to learn what made them work and what else can be done etc so i googled hacking and found hackforums.net from there i learned HTML and java and anything else i could but honestly i think i prefer helping people with computer problems and security and I'm getting more and more interested in SE and psychology

Edited by Jagn, 21 December 2009 - 06:17 AM.

[heisenbug]

My experience probably pales to quite a few of you. I sure hate to submit a long winded response because it will probably be uninteresting to everyone else, but here goes.

In the eighties I got my first computer. It was an IBM PC Jr. and it had an 8088 processor (8-bit external data bus), 64K of RAM, and didn’t even have a hard drive. It had two large floppy drives, one for the OS and one for saving data. It came with GW Basic and I really enjoyed playing with that. Sadly, I didn’t save the PC when I was done with it. I traded it in for my next PC.

My next PC was an IBM PC/AT with a 286 processor and a 300 baud modem. A few of my friends started beige boxing in order to access BBS systems that were long distance. I found out what the BBS systems were about and I got hooked on the ASCII text based games. Eventually, I conned my parents into letting me have my own phone line to start my own BBS. I started with Spitfire software and then eventually moved to Renegade to run the BBS. Now my friends and I could play ASCII games from home. “They” really only used beige boxing for Gopher and e-mail at that point.

I attended two 2600 meetings in the early nineties, but wasn’t really able to continue because I didn’t have my own car back then. I could only go when my friends were not grounded, which seemed to be constantly.

I was fascinated by social engineering, and so after high school I pursued a degree in psychology. Since I wasn’t legally able to drink yet I had also pursued interest in homebrewing beer. For some reason, no one had any concerns selling beer ingredients to a minor. I received my college degree in Psychology (and should have received a minor in beer consumption), but found the job market didn’t pay what I thought it would. After auditing an electronics class for fun, I was motivated again and I went back to college to pursue a second degree in Information Technology (with an emphasis in Software Development).

So here I am now, two college degrees and eleven years of software development work experience later and I am still learning every day. I constantly look to plug exploits at work, play with electronics at home, still brew beer, and design and weld funny contraptions to brew with. Currently, I am studying for the CISSP. After playing with networking for a few years, I have had a renewed interest in network security. The knowledge is interesting and security seems so different and much more complex than what I remember.

I try to learn what I can about technology, and play with what I don’t know. It seems the more I learn, the more subjects open up and the more I realize the volume of what I still need to learn. I guess Socrates quote of, “True wisdom lies in knowing you know nothing” holds true. Technology seems to be a fascinating constant supply of new information, which is just fine for me, because if it wasn’t I would have been bored with it long ago.

[UnknownEncryption]

I am still and always will be learning. My uncle taught me the very basics when i got my first computer and if it wasnt for him I would probably have a life. I have been learning from experience and online sources. I have only been around computers since like 2001 but I know I could have learned much more if I only had self discipline which I lack greatly.

Does anybody know any good sources to learn C++? I had an ebook once but I lost it after my drive failed.

you problly dont need it anymore but their is a guy on youtube that puts it very clearly search him up his account is http://www.youtube.com/user/antiRTFM

[AlexZ]

I am still and always will be learning. My uncle taught me the very basics when i got my first computer and if it wasnt for him I would probably have a life. I have been learning from experience and online sources. I have only been around computers since like 2001 but I know I could have learned much more if I only had self discipline which I lack greatly.

Does anybody know any good sources to learn C++? I had an ebook once but I lost it after my drive failed.

you problly dont need it anymore but their is a guy on youtube that puts it very clearly search him up his account is http://www.youtube.com/user/antiRTFM

Very nice dude!!
He started for the beginning but i think that the quality of the videos is very poor!!

[MrFluffy]

zx81 for birthday present, when it was new out, which means the bleach hides some greys now.
Time passes......
zx81 dies from dodgy soldering now wearing a homemade external keyboard, ram chip piggybacking the char rom so it could do udg's and of course more memory. And Id learnt z80 because you had to really.
Then on a journey of nondescript weird 8 bit computers including the vic and 64's, 6502 followed, then paper round'd for my first amiga, a early a500,68000, the demo scene as a coder, pulled a few things apart to see how they worked etc like everyone did. Made some crap games, got ripped off by game industry meanwhile discovering bbs's and then being in the uk having to learn about phone dial tones and stuff to be able to call the hardcode ones in the states.
Then got into ham radio, lots of homebuilt stuff, rtty rigs, amtor, some ax25 on a AEA tnc then onto this funky new fangled stuff called tcp and a baycom, only over radio. Then "the internet" arrived to the general public, and I discovered efnet, eggdrop, tcl scripting, splits and smurfing etc, which I still miss for all its chaotic anarchy. Then linux and shell accounts naturally followed.

You dont ever stop learning. And Im going to carry on growing old disgracefully

[Hatter]

I'm still learning. I just recently starting teaching myself.

[BigBadWolf]

self-taught. college educated in general, but pretty much taught myself everything about programming, hacking, and security.

To be clear, when I say "self taught" that included a lot of help and research from sites like this.

[The Gibson]

In 1995 my girlfriend taught me how to cut and paste! That was the start of it all. I went to tech school for electricity and electronics which needed pcs to program chips and PLC's and different things. From there I was really hooked. I started collecting broken pcs and buying parts. I actually overclocked a P2 233mhz to 400mhz at one point, totally ground breaking stuff. I would take all my broken machines and build Frankensteins! I bought books and started learning everything I could take in. I had a friend at work that was also into computers and still is that taught me a lot of basic stuff. (good guy). I went to another school and got my Linux+, A+, Security+, MCSE, CCNA, CCDA, CCNP, and I'm working on web security and design certs. I work full time as a net admin/help desk/web designer/ and security professional. And on the side I do freelance everything. I'm even a licensed electrician. As for hacking eh, it's part of the game. I find myself "hacking my own networks looking for holes and such. That's about it. I try to use as much open source software as I can and my favorite OS's are Debian and Win7. I never stop learning for sure. I have over 2,ooo manuals and how to's in either PDF format or real books. Remember those? I think they were made out of paper.

[FlamingFox]

I learned via books and the internet. With the dawn of express editions, however, that's when I really started to seriously learn.

[Phreker]

I ,personally, started to learn this very year, for the moment I'm trying to learn about programming , I'm learning Python as my first language and reading as many pdf files about hacking and read some about phreaking that got my interest ( especially the one i found describing the 2111 conference....so many people talking on 1 free loop. incredible) but i read 1 article( for the moment ) here on BinRev that says that Phreaking doesnt really work with the new digital age of phones.

my solution to revive phreaking is, if its getting digital ....it's just getting closer to hacking....so mixing phreaking and hacking together might revive the flame (i have no knowledge whatsoever of what im talking about....im just firing ideas and suggestions as they come).

i have attached the file where i learnt about phreaking (it's pretty old but it still hooked my interest)(the p25 is just where i am at in the file)

Attached Files

•  The Official Phreaker p25.pdf   101.54K   5 downloads

[Olorcain]

I started out messing around with BBS's and playing around with various versions of Dos from 3.2 to 6.22
Then I got into Linux, around this time I met a guy at the local ISP and started going to Linux user group meetings
Met another guy that knew a lot and had the coolest hacker den with a Thin net BNC connected network of computers including an X,Y plotter
He gave me a box of old computer parts such as 8088's 286's 386's 486's etc. So I went home and called him up later and said hey "how do I marry these mfm drives together?" on the first 8088 I had ever built and he gasped and then started laughing as he said "What, those things still work! I used to rest my beer on those motherboards!" Then while in middle school I hacked into the computers in the library and then again in the guidance counselor's office whereby his jaw dropped when I told him I didn't need his password to get into his computer. These were Dos machines that were easily exploited by holding down the shift key on startup thereby dropping one into a C:\> prompt. Anyway for this little stunt myself and my one buddy got banned from using the computers by the time we got into high school.
My buddy and I made the school call in Technicians to fix the problem. I had no problem explaining to the guidance counselor that their computers were wide open.
I don't really engage in any sort of malicious behavior though, this was just a middle school prank but pointed to serious vulnerability on their part.

[FallChallenge]

just lonely state..