Hacker Wannabe If youre a hacker please come in

[rantsh 0]

Hmmm... I hate to say it but in the security area I have to admit my "n00bness". I've always had an interest in this subject but never really had the chance to study or practice to become a hacker.Now, all I'm asking is a little share of your wisdom on how a regular computer joe (like me) could develop his/her cryptographer/decrypter/hacking skills.Notice that I'm not asking for a big bunch of your time and/or effort. All I ask for is a little guidance on where to start. Remember "there's a big difference between knowing the path and walking the path".So, if I may say so... HELP ME BECOME A HACKER PLEASE!!!! ( )Either way, I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, there may quite a few who are afraid to ask so they won't seem stupid in the eyes of other people. Like me, they have probably read a million tutorials that are more confusing than helpful; which is what brings me to this last resort of begging for useful guidance that's actually useful!!!I thank you all for your time either in advance, and hope I hear from you soon... (YES YOU! THE REAL HACKER WHO'S READING THIS NOW)

[LikMeBalleFM 0]

You`re definitely not alone int this, I`m one of those poeple you described in your post.I would love to know/learn more about this too.So yeah please do share some wisdom fallow astahosters.El

[yungblood 0]

According to old school "hacking" rules, you've already broken one of the main ones... asking for help to get started ;)I am a hacker by the old definition. One who goes into systems for knowledge, not to destroy. In fact, I would never go into personal info if I found any. At the most, the only changes I would make to a system that I got into is leave a message saying that thier system was insecure, and stating how I got in.Most people that call themselves hackers are not true hackers. Most just run programs that other people make without understanding what is truely going on behind the scenes. All they usually want to do is cause damage to sites.If you want to learn how to become a real hacker, I can point you in the right direction, but it is up to you to do the work.When I was learning piano/keyboard, my teacher told me there are 3 P's in music: Practice, Practice, Practice. In hacking, there are 3 R's: Research, Research, Research. To start, I recommend learning linux, because you can look through all the source code. Also, get a copy of all the RFC's (Request For Comments) that document the protocols of the internet. Learning to read programming languages is a must, if you want to see what's going on. Watch the tcp/ip stack to see the communication between your computer, and others. Once you understand what is going on, then you can take a program that allows you to open a connection, and manually talk to other computers. Learning something like http is an easy way to start.I've told you alot more than I should have. I have one other recommendation, only hack your own computers. When you hack computers you don't own, you run the risk of going to federal prison. And don't forget the 3 R's of hacking.-YB

[rantsh 0]

According to old school "hacking" rules, you've already broken one of the main ones... asking for help to get started 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Believe me when I understand this rule, I appreciate what you have told me because it's actually what I wanted, I did not want anyone to tell me how to do stuff, but where to begin looking for (as you said point in the right direction).

 

Now, it's not my intention to hack anyone else, but I'm just craving for the knowledge... sadfully I don't have the skills(yet) to accomplish this mission. Actually one of the things I really suck, and want to get better is at cryptography (and I mean There's advanced, basic. stupid and then there's me). I've really tried and practiced a lot, but it costs me to even decrypt one of those newspaper game...

 

On the code reading thing, well I do have some skills in that area. but if there's lack of knowledge on the basics, well you may know all the code... but...

 

Either way, I really appreciate your recomendations and guidance. I wish you luck and I'll keep going on with my research. REALLY... THANKS, see you around (if you ever are by southamerica or the caribbean)...

[MOO 0]

I myself had alwasy wanted to be interested in Hacking stuff and material yet I had no clue where to go and who to ask to learn this kinda stuff. You just cant go up to a hacker online and ask him to help you out and teach you tricks hehe its more lilkely hes hacking ur pc while your chatting with him.

[Cube Domain1405241509 0]

This kind of topic has reminded me of the saying, "Do what you know, say what you don't." Unfortunately, this kind of behavior is no more prevalent than in message boards. There are lots of annoying retards over the Internet who threatens to, "take over the board" and threatens the board Administrator. These phonies talk a lot of smack but can't really make due with these threats.A Hacker Wannabe's method would generally be to go message boards, make themselves known and eventually when they become bored or pissed off by an Administrator, they just strike fear upon everyone, threatening to destroy the board. The next thing you know, you're banned and everyone ends up laughing at you.To sum it all up in a nutshell, don't be an idiot or the other kids will laugh at you.

[rantsh 0]

This kind of topic has reminded me of the saying, "Do what you know, say what you don't." Unfortunately, this kind of behavior is no more prevalent than in message boards. There are lots of annoying retards over the Internet who threatens to, "take over the board" and threatens the board Administrator. These phonies talk a lot of smack but can't really make due with these threats.

 

A Hacker Wannabe's method would generally be to go message boards, make themselves known and eventually when they become bored or pissed off by an Administrator, they just strike fear upon everyone, threatening to destroy the board. The next thing you know, you're banned and everyone ends up laughing at you.

 

To sum it all up in a nutshell, don't be an idiot or the other kids will laugh at you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

mmm... I'm sorry kiddo, I do not intend to attack anyone or threathen the board or whatever, I was just curious of the hacking subject. To be honest I don't care if anyone laughs at me or not, actually I couldn't care less.. I'm above that kind of situation...

 

Now, thanks for the "idio" and "retard" adjectives, if it wanting to learn something makes me an idiot, then I'm the major idiot in the world, since I want to learn everything that there's to learn...

 

Either way, I appreciate your input...

[calixt 0]

Now, all I'm asking is a little share of your wisdom on how a regular computer joe (like me) could develop his/her cryptographer/decrypter/hacking skills.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

rantsh,

I agree with yungblood: research is the only way to get skills.

you should try to find out about the most recent security issues by using your favorite search engine to look up words like "bugtraq", "vuln", "pen testing" and so on (i am sure you will find more applicable words the longer you research...)

everything i know about getting access to remote computers i found on the internet, so you surely will, too.

 

cryptography is even more difficult. a good site to start with ist

http://www.cryptographyworld.com/

 

last but not least there are some web sites with hacking & cracking challenges whre you can try your skills ... You might like this one for a start: http://www.try2hack.nl/

 

greetz

calixt

[unimatrix 0]

This is just a story from my college days a couple years ago. I grew up around computers since age 5 started Basic programming when I was about 7ish. Still like DOS better than Windows. Anyrate. My Senior year there were a couple freshmen that hung out at one of my friend's apartment. One kept going on about how cool his skills were and how cool AMD and Linux were and how he could hack etc.. He used my friend's PowerMac a lot to play muds. Well my friend's DSL router kept locking up and the kid using swore that maybe my friend's system was being hacked. When the kid was gone on time I was over with a couple other pals and my friend was concerned about it. I thought it was BS and pulled up the system logs from OSX and started looking through them. Took less than 5 minutes to notice the number of outbound requests going out. Looking further back, noticed the IP address and port were the same used for the kid's favourite MUD and client. This coupled with the fact the kid had no clue what he was talking about in terms of processor design and with Linux. (which I'm not an expert, but I started with Linux in the Slackware 2 days...ended with SuSE 6.4 and moved on to *BSD) I uninstalled the client and said, looks like the program keeps trying to connect. I moved away after college for a job and a couple months later on my friends and I were chatting online. Turns out the kid redownled the damned client and it was doing the same thing again. He also ended up failing out of college and moved back home and was working as a checker at Wal-Mart. My point. The "I want to be a hacker so I can mispell words with letters" is a bunch of crap. Anyone who can't, or more importantly won't, spell elite correctly is just a poser-wannabe. People that too often have other issues and try to fit into the "computer nerd" subculture which doesn't quite exist as it did in the 1960's - 1980's. My interest in network security comes from being a self-taught network and webserver admin. I ran a browser-based online text game for several years and eventually had issues with the player community trying to beat the system not the game. After someone managed to compromise an OpenBSD box I gave up because the game wasn't making that much money plus Real Life® was taking over (last semester my senior year of college)Network security is a big business. It is the ones that can spell and use proper gramer that get paid the big bucks as consultants. As far as learning, there are a lot of books and articles on securing networks. Try taking a class at a local community college. Several around where I am offer professional courses designed for non-degreed students looking to sharpen their skills.And for the record. My degrees are in International Business and German. Computers was something I learned on my own all self-taught and everytime I try to walk away, some how get sucked back in...

[tansqrx 0]

rantsh I feel your pain as well. This is my take on hackers and is probably not shared my most in this thread. When I have needed help in the past no one would come to my aid and quite frankly it pissed me off. When I asked for help all I got was “read it for yourself.” I think the biggest problem is that all of these “elite” hackers are all show and don’t have the first clue how a TCP packet works. As I have found out over the years, “read it for yourself” is the standard. In many cases you have to read entire books just to find a nugget of knowledge that you need. Hacking is not easy but I will try and help you the best that I can and not follow in the foot steps of my “mentors.”For everyone else. You should not be afraid to give out knowledge. If you know something that someone else does not and they ask for it, give it freely with a smile on your face. If rantsh is truly determined he will find the knowledge by another means and you have only done him a disservice by wasting his time by asking. If on the other hand rantsh just wants a quick fix and wants to learn to hack in 30 minutes or less he will not even read to the end of my message. If he turns out to be a script-kiddie then I feel that he will not cause much damage, at least not to any systems that are properly patched (see below.) After he fools around for about 3 days it will start to bore him because he will have to do some real work after that point to make it any further. Hacking is hard work and takes a lot of time. Without the determination hacking is not possible, and I will give rantsh the benefit of the doubt and help anyway I can.Hackers are good. They keep software writers, engineers, and companies in check. I do not agree with hacking to cause trouble (I believe the PC term now is cracker) but hacking does provide a valuable service in that hackers find the weaknesses in systems and networks. The developers in turn have to counter the new threat and provide a better piece of software. This can even be taken a step further. Although this is not always the case but many security holes usually indicate poor programming practices or techniques. If the programmer would have taken the extra time to dynamically allocate the C string buffer instead of statically allocating it, many problems would not occur.I have studied computer security long enough to know that there are many areas which encompass “hacking.” The area is getting so large now that it is being divided into specialized areas. 150 years ago you could study engineering. 50 years ago you had mechanical, electrical, civil, chemical. Today even electrical has hundreds of sub areas of study. This is becoming the same in hacking. I can see from your previous posts that you would like to study cryptography. I will have to say that this is most demanding and hardest part of hacking.I have had the privilege of taking a graduate level cryptography class and what else can I say but it was hard. As for the basic algorithms, they are very tedious and can take hours if you do them by hand. The communication paradigms are hard for me too because also of things have to happen for a secure connection. It was hard but I was very glad that I took the class.Rantsh, you need to do a few things here. Modern cryptography is nothing like decoding the puzzles in the newspaper. This is the simplest form of cryptography and would be broken by a computer faster than the time it takes to lift you finger off the Enter key. The first is to buy a book called “Applied Cryptography” (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471117099/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/002-9902175-7126420?v=glance&s=books) or you should be able to find it in any good library. The book that I used was “Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice” (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130914290/qid=1126026386/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-9902175-7126420?v=glance&s=books) which is also a very handy reference. Run through a DES example and work a sample problem completely from beginning to end. This in its self should take a few hours to work the example. Next move on to AES. AES is more difficult as it requires advanced math (finite fields) that even I don’t understand fully. Next is the hashing algorithms and then run through key exchanges and PGP. This in itself should keep you busy for months. If this is too much for you then don’t waste you time.While you are doing this you will have to learn a few more vital skills. All of this took me years in a college environment but are vital to learning how to hack. Learn a basic programming language. Your first one should be ANSI C, it is the mother of all and most commonly used in exploits. Also learn the basics of how a computer works creating a system from scratch to the TCP/IP protocol.This is about all I can do at this time. Let me know if you need help. The next step for you besides what I have mentioned before is to come up with a specific question.

[rantsh 0]

thanks for the help tansqrx, I really appreciate the focus you've given me through your input.Let me share a little bit of my background so everyone will know why I could never do it myself.I come from a spanish speaking latin country (Venezuela) which as you may know is very poor (well the people is poor, the country is very rich and could have a lot of potencial). Thus, I was raised on a spanish environment, I only got a dial-up connection when I was in the middle of my college studies and DSL by the end of it. As I mentioned before, I have a bachelor's degree in computer engineering, yet it's funny, you see... computer security was (on that time) a big taboo in my university, so when I was required to choose for a thesis I got 4 subjects rejected: "Viruses, Why and how they're produced, and their detection", "Creation of an effective and intelligent IDS using AI technology", "Cyber-Attack detection, prevention and contraattack", "WEP Flaws and improvement". As you may know, a thesis is the perfect chance to define your specialty field, but for some reason the directives of my university thought that it was not going to be well seen the fact that one of their student was talking and/or developing viruses, or hacking systems... So instead they assigned me a subject to develop an intranet software for the school... PATHETIC... And this was not 10 or 20 years ago... this was 1 and a half years ago.There are other reasons why I couldn't study to be my true self, for instance, as a rule I had to learn english, even writing this post has already took me 15 minutes, then there's the books you have need to buy in order to learn the very basic stuff... Those books you suggested (for instance) are not found in any bookstore in Venezuela, the reason: $$$. You see, the "Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice (3rd Edition) by Williams Stallings" costs 76.95USD, just for the record this about half the mothly salary I was earning as an engineer in venezuela. Because I have moved from Venezuela, and I had got new, better career opportunitites, I decided to ask through this forum just for a tip on where to start, thanks to you and yungblood at least I have a better perspective of what to do now.Hopefully, I'll have the chance to achieve my master's degree in Information Security, and (because dreaming is still free) maybe, just maybe become one of the great ones, if not, then I'll be satisfied with the knowledge I had achieved on the way. In any case for the rest of you who are reading this post, the purpouse of this post is not to make up an excuse of why I haven't ever done what's needed, or, to create pity in others so they'll help me out. And NO I don't anyone telling me ESPECIFICALLY what to do, all I want to know is where to start, I know the rule of "don't ask, just do it". I've been reading on this subject for a while now, and FYI, I don't disagree with your rule, but right now I'm like a child without any guidance, so I'm not looking for a "Go here, do that" reply, that was never my intention... All I'm asking is "where's start/go point"In any case, all your inputs are welcome, and thanks again to tansqrx and yungblood for their very valuable opinions, time and guidance...

[yungblood 0]

rantsh, If money is still an obsticle, getting linux is a free way to learn much of what you want to know. It comes with alot of documentation, and by studying the code, it can show you not only how many programs work under the surface, but also how security programs and encryption works. I personally have taken a copy of the blowfish encryption library from a linux program, and ported it over to windows, and beefed up the security on it abit. So there is a wealth of information in linux if you're willing to spend the time sorting it out.-YB

[Sarah81 0]

I took an unhealthy interest in hacking when I was a teenager. I had a chat with LordDredd once (very elite guy) who told me to learn programming languages.Well, that's the best place to start. the problem is that i started getting into it and quickly learned that i don't have the aptitude for it. (If I can't even figure out C++, there is NO way that I'm ever going to do anything COOL with a computer.)I'm yet another person who admires the skill and talent but can't do it ... and will gladly encourage other people to learn as much as possible about it because, hey, knowledge is power *grins* Me, though, I'll watch. So ... if you can make a go of it, use your newfound powers for good and don't give hackers a really bad name like the idiots who keep doing destructive and retarded stuff.

[tansqrx 0]

rantsh,

If you have a bachelors in Computer Engineering then you should have most of the basic knowledge need to become a very successful hacker. Of course I am from the US and take for granted many of the luxuries that we have here. I do come from the same background education wise and therefore might be able to help you out on your quest. First of all where did you move to and are you going to pursue a masterâs degree? I was fortunate enough to actually take two âhackingâclasses and a network security class right before I graduated with my Masters. These classes were invaluable to my knowledge but I can only assume that you will not have the same luck. Actually Last year was the first time that any of these classes were offered, so ethical hacking is just not starting to take hold here too.

Take what you have already learned. If you have a computer engineering degree then you should have one programming in your âtoolboxâ of equipment. I also know that you most likely have taken a networking class of some sort. These two things have already put you ahead of the game.

As for the books. If you are enrolled in a university, does your institution have any sort of book loan program? Where I went to school, if they did have the book they could transfer it from another university. Also do they have online access to periodicals and the such? This could be a great source of information. From my experience, I have not found any good and complete hacking information on the web, at least not a one stop shot at it. Another book that I highly recommend is âNetwork Security Assessmentâ by OâReilly. It was one of the main books in my Masters course and I found it to be one of the best hacking books out there.

I guess the only thing that I can tell you to do is push, pull, bite, scrape, and anything short of kill to get a hold of these books. Of course I would never condone the infringement of copyrighted material, but I hear rumor that there are many e-books to be found on the P2P networks. Perhaps you might find some information that way. I will help in any way. I have all the said books and if you ask enough times I will do anything short of copy each chapter word for word and send them to you, but you have to be willing to learn. Perhaps other here will also like to learn from our conversation. Your homework assignment for the next time is this. Go to https://www.hackr.org/ register, and complete the first five (5) levels.

[rantsh 0]

Your homework assignment for the next time is this.  Go to https://hackr.org/ register, and complete the first five (5) levels.

1064322297[/snapback]

Let's see if this reply goes does go through, I took your advise and got the first 2 books you suggested, I'm still trying to get a hold on the last one you mentioned...

 

I registered last night at https://hackr.org/ and completed the first 15 levels (all the challenges in the beginner's section).

 

Just to let you know, I haven't registered for my master's now, because the next semester is on january (at least at the only school I know teaches some security related degrees).

 

Talk to you soon....