A Hackers Beginner Guide

[-Ninjex-]

Great post!

But I'm curious what counts as "experience" with linux.

I've tried ubuntu and debian, and can figure out how to do most things with the internet and the commands "man", "help", and "info". I know my way around the filesystem (It makes so much more sense than the windows one! ), and I know a bit about file permissions. Do I count as experienced?

And also, why not use BT as your main distro?

Thanks,
3vilp4wn

By experience, I mean having an understanding of what everything does, how to get around, how to trouble shoot issues, etc... If you feel confident, and you know what you are doing; feel free to step up your linux distro into something more advanced.

As for BT, I say not to use it as a main operating system because it isn't meant for that. It's not meant for everyday use such as downloading pictures, making graphics, downloading music, browsing the web, etc. It was made for a purpose to pentest. By using it as your main os, if not careful, you will probably notice that it isn't as stable as some other linux operating systems such as ubuntu. Also, the more junk you pile onto it as a main os, could potential be making your system more vulnerable and detectable than it initially is supposed to be.

[3vilp4wn]

Ok, thank you for explaining more. I think I'll try out a live backtrack USB tomorrow, and see how that goes.

[Diiverse]

I definitely want to start by saying that I did in fact take a lot of information away from this post and definitely hope that I can utilize it and use these steps and suggestions as a stepping stone towards my journey to becoming a great hacker. I'm actually very new to this and want to keep working on it, however at this point i'm personally working on the coding and programming side of this. I suppose my question to you at this point would be what type of code should I start with? I'm thinking of starting with python as I have not only read but been told that it is a very good type of code to learn as it can be used in various different ways. The site I plan on using to learn this is http://www.codecademy.com If anyone here is around the same place as me, I would maybe like to chat with you and learn a bit of what you have learned so far, also I would like to learn a bit from the "Veteran Hackers" here, i'm very interested in this and I really have the strive and urge to commit myself to this and learn everything that I can about it. Thank you very much for this post and the help that i'm sure will come in due time.

[DrRoach]

This is a great post once again from you Ninjex. It's amazing how often you learn something new from reading forum posts like this and I thank you on behalf of all newbies for posting this as it is a great piece of advice.

In answer to your question Diiverse I am currently learning C and even though it's not Python here's some good sites to get you set on the right footsteps, bear in mind they're not perfect as I have found some faults with them but I'd be lost without them

http://cforbeginners.com/
http://www.cprogramming.com/

They both have a lot of information but I would say go through the top one first as it couldn't explain the basics any simpler.

Once again thanks for this post ninjex

[fashizzlepop]

K&R is the best resource for learning C. Just about any C programmer will be able to relate since just about every C programmer uses that as a starting point.

[Kurousagi]

A very good read thank you Ninjex. Quite a few of those steps i am already doing, but that has came about more from programming where you learn in order to better your skills one needs to constantly research, as well as to try/test out what you learn. Reason i am here now . In order to know how to protect yourself from attacks one has to know how to do them.

[QuomQuit]

That was a nice read, Ninjex! Thanks for posting, I am sure it was useful for everyone taking some time to look through it.

[Siixes]

Great post Ninjex! Just to affirm what you wrote, when I started learning networking, I was consistantly asking questions like:

"Why in the world would I need to know the 7 layer OSI model?"
"Seriously, who cares about the 3-way TCP handshake?!"

But without understanding those extremely basic fundamentals, it would be impossible to understand Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) or Man-on-the-Side (MotS) attacks. So, for anyone that's just starting to learn, the basics might feel tedious and you may be frequently asking yourself, "Why would I need to know this? I want to haxxor!" But stick through it and you'll be surprised on the other side.

Regarding which programming language to learn first...personally I'd recommend Python. Only because, for me, it was easier to get to a stage where I could write code that actually *did* something. In the end, I would recommend at least Python as well as C. Python to quickly develop code that actually does stuff, and C to gain a more fundamental understanding of programming in general. That is just my opinion, and coding is definitely not my strong suit, so please take that with a grain of salt.

For anyone that does download BT5 and wants to play around with it...Metasploitable (http://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/Metasploitable) was recommended to me. It is an intentionally vulnerable OS that you can run in a VM and attack with BT to learn how to use the tools. I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard good things about it.

Best of luck to all in their future endeavors!

[3vilp4wn]

Regarding which programming language to learn first...personally I'd recommend Python. Only because, for me, it was easier to get to a stage where I could write code that actually *did* something. In the end, I would recommend at least Python as well as C. Python to quickly develop code that actually does stuff, and C to gain a more fundamental understanding of programming in general. That is just my opinion, and coding is definitely not my strong suit, so please take that with a grain of salt.

^This. Python == awesome. You still should learn C (++) though, to gain a understanding of the fundamentals.

For those of you who want to use python to hack, look into "Violent Python". Fas recommended it awhile back, and it's been awesome so far.

[deepWithin]

Great post!

As for my experience in learning a programming language. I have been learning some php, js and HTML at http://www.codecademy.com and really like it. Found an even better site (my own taste) for learning programming tho. I have been learning python the past month through http://www.learnpythonthehardway.org and I really recommend it to every newbie in programming out there! Been learning much more than I think I would be able to in the past month. Goodluck to you all!