2 replies to this topic

[niro]

Hey, I'm new and hoping to get into security and hacking related field. I'm wondering if the more experienced hackers/ pen testers would guide me and lead me on the right direction, to be specific I'd like to know how you guys started off and what I can do to become more experienced in port scanning and exploiting an OS so that I can get access to administrative privileges. Things like that. What would you guys recommend me to read, watch, and do so that I can expand my knowledge in the security field. I hope I'm not asking too much >.< To make myself clear, I'm not trying to hack for illegal purposes, just to have the knowledge, because I'm very interested in hacking. Thanks for your time and I hope to get some responses

[serrath]

You'll want to become proficient with the most commonly used tools at least to begin with, and understand how best to use them (and specifically WHY you're using them with whatever method you're using).

Adrian Crenshaw has some excellent "Hacking Illustrated" videos for this, most of which consist of slideshow presentations from hack-con events and demonstrations. If you search for NMap and Metasploit specifically you should get a great jumpstart.

Make sure you understand the underlying mechanic behind any exploit you use and behind all of the communication that's going on. Wikipedia's an excellent source for that.

If you want to learn to program buffer overflows well (not just get your feet wet, but if you want to be good at writing shellcode and getting every bit of efficiency out of your assembler code) I'd suggest that before you even begin learning buffer overflows or any x86 assembly: learn CoreWar and get good at it.

Adrian Crenshaw's site is www.irongeek.com
You know where wikipedia is.
For CoreWar starter materials, PM me.

[Presently Unknown]

Hey, I'm new and hoping to get into security and hacking related field. I'm wondering if the more experienced hackers/ pen testers would guide me and lead me on the right direction, to be specific I'd like to know how you guys started off and what I can do to become more experienced in port scanning and exploiting an OS so that I can get access to administrative privileges.

I'd recommend reading "Hacking for Dummies". You can find it in bookstores or at some libraries, but if you learn about Google's advanced operators you can find a PDF version for free. Try reading things aren't necessarily related to hacking- knowing how a network works and how different types of software (e.g. servers vs. clients, various protocols) work will help you in the long run.

Finally, I'd recommend learning a programming language, especially one like Perl. It can run on all operating systems and in surprisingly powerful. Java and C are also ones to look into but they are harder (C especially).

Good luck!