Tutorialized Community-Building?

[n0l1m17z]

Hello there, I've been a member of this and similar communities, though not extremely contributing in here, and I've decided to give building a site of my own on the matter. However, I'm not just gonna try to make another hackthissite or undergroundsystems, i feel that the hacker-community might have a need for a more instructional site, or put differently, instead of just throwing up a challenge and say, learn html to complete it, i wanna fill some serverspace with guides on what parts of html is really intresting for a given task, what means of penetrationtesting is possible on different levels of programming skills, updated guides introducing people to basics like sockets, bauds, network protocols, instead of all the lovely books still explaining why token ring works like it does and so on. I'm not saying i wanna make a script-kiddie bible, i know it may appear so, but i believe a practical approach helps interest build, and the willingness to learn ones tools for real.

What I'm asking (except for the probable flaming even considering making a new community-based site earns me), is feedback on how to best get a community like that starting, possible ideas for ranking/point systems of a sort, and eventual mentor-system-implementations. And of course any other brilliant ideas you wonderful people might have. I am aware that I'll probably have to write a shitload of tutorials myself for a start.

Oh, and for the record, the domain I've registered is called http://www.HackerJazz.com and it's currently suffering from just being a template, as i'm in the process of building some php and css.

Thanks in advantage.

[Goatboy]

Take all this as constructive criticism:

Most people looking for these sort of guides want to learn (read: retain in their short-term memory) the minimum needed to accomplish a task. After they accomplish that task, the knowledge starts to slowly fade. This is because they have all the answers laid out in front of them. They aren't required to dig a little on their own. It's that process which really gets a concept to stick.

Similarly, I think this would be teaching the opposite of what hacking should be, and that is learning all you can by whatever means necessary. Don't just learn what code you need to type for an XSS attack, but also learn why an XSS works, how to stop it, the various forms it can take, etc. If you just point them to some "guides on what parts of html is really intresting for a given task," you are cheating them of knowledge of the language as a whole.

Summed up, I'm not telling you not to do it, but just to keep in mind what the end result may be.

[n0l1m17z]

The way one perceives the learning process is probably often defined by his/her own way of learning. I, for instance, had trouble sitting down and learning perl, before i had seen it's powers demonstrated. I guess you are right, some people will look for minimal work to perform something. Some people will look at yotube to complete hackthissite's challenges. While i do not respect script-kiddies, it seems to me that losing all those who learn like me, the ones who need a little blood on the tongue to get entangled, just because we're afraid our knowledge will be executed by a wannabe, seems opposite of my idea of how hackers work. Perhaps i just believe in spreading information just as much as obtaining it. None the less, it's noted. Thanks for lending me your view.

[insomaniacal]

Good luck with it! Although I agree that 99% of the time, if you're looking at a tutorial, you're just trying to do something short term rather than really learn about it.

Regardless, the spreading of information and making it available is always a good thing. Try to make sure your tutorials explain not only how to do something, but why it works as well.

[raddy1313]

The way one perceives the learning process is probably often defined by his/her own way of learning. I, for instance, had trouble sitting down and learning perl, before i had seen it's powers demonstrated. I guess you are right, some people will look for minimal work to perform something. Some people will look at yotube to complete hackthissite's challenges. While i do not respect script-kiddies, it seems to me that losing all those who learn like me, the ones who need a little blood on the tongue to get entangled, just because we're afraid our knowledge will be executed by a wannabe, seems opposite of my idea of how hackers work. Perhaps i just believe in spreading information just as much as obtaining it. None the less, it's noted. Thanks for lending me your view.

I think you and I are of a like mind, I can see why you would be striving for a consolidated source of information like that. But at the same time, I think insomanical presents a good point, that it would ultimately create laziness and more script kiddies within the community. I completely understand where you're coming from though, when I'm doing the missions sometimes I pray to God there was just a place where I could read up on the techniques necessary. I would read the entire article/page to gather all the information and make a concerted effort to understand why and how an attack or vulnerability works, but in the end, I think you and I are a rarer breed than most who would visit your site. I will say this though, as much as I curse and bang my head and rip my hair out while doing the missions, once I finally figure it out, it is incredibly gratifying and I truly understand why this example worked.

I taught myself programming languages basically because I wanted to write computer programs and there weren't any classes offered at my high school. In the end, though, I feel like I have a better grasp on how a computer operates rather than how a specific language works. I have seen computer science majors completely stumped when trying to write in a new language because they don't understand how the computer operates; rather, they know what works in this specific language and they wind up pigeon-holing themselves. I really feel that if you want to understand how something works, you eventually have to try it first hand. If you want to know how SQL injection works, setup an SQL server and script, and just try different commands. The same thing with PHP or Perl. I really feel that while your site would be well-intentioned and meant for people like you and I, it would end up teaching another mass of idiots how to do rather than how to think.

[sanddbox]

The way one perceives the learning process is probably often defined by his/her own way of learning. I, for instance, had trouble sitting down and learning perl, before i had seen it's powers demonstrated. I guess you are right, some people will look for minimal work to perform something. Some people will look at yotube to complete hackthissite's challenges. While i do not respect script-kiddies, it seems to me that losing all those who learn like me, the ones who need a little blood on the tongue to get entangled, just because we're afraid our knowledge will be executed by a wannabe, seems opposite of my idea of how hackers work. Perhaps i just believe in spreading information just as much as obtaining it. None the less, it's noted. Thanks for lending me your view.

...You lost me at 'blood on the tongue'

[bunbunr]

Tutor not tutorialized. That would be very good. Someone who you can talk to and fire questions at without getting spoilers would be amazing. In fact i would pay money for a tutor. Or just someone i could ask questions without getting the spoilers given to me. Though i guess that might cut back on the fun. I feel like i almost get an adrenaline run. When im stumped and than figure it out i mean im only on lvl 8 but man its amazing.

[Goatboy]

...You lost me at 'blood on the tongue'

Meaning a taste of things to come. The blood on the tongue is a likely reference to battle-lust.

[insomaniacal]

Tutor not tutorialized. That would be very good. Someone who you can talk to and fire questions at without getting spoilers would be amazing. In fact i would pay money for a tutor. Or just someone i could ask questions without getting the spoilers given to me. Though i guess that might cut back on the fun. I feel like i almost get an adrenaline run. When im stumped and than figure it out i mean im only on lvl 8 but man its amazing.

That's what #help on IRC is for. Sure it's filled with totally irrelevant conversations 99% of the time, but if you ask for help, someone there will most likely help you out.

[n0l1m17z]

Meaning a taste of things to come. The blood on the tongue is a likely reference to battle-lust.

10 points to Gryffindor.

Alright, so the general opinion seem to be that i would be feeding the slackers too much. I suppose it's a fine line between theory and getting your hands dirty, I still believe it's quite possible to achieve what i have in mind. For instance, when i say 'interesting parts of html' what i mean is the possibility of writing a guide on what parts of html is interesting for, for instance, sql-exploitation/injection. Let's face it, not everything is. Header-tags isn't, balding your text isn't. But looking for apache-comments, .php refs, and so on is. I'm not gonna advise people to just learn that, but I'm convinced that the ones with the right mindset for the art would start to wonder what the rest does as soon as the analyzing has started. But i guess all of this could, theoretically, be a matter of discussion before setting up tutorial-guidelines when starting the actual page. Because collecting resource-links and so on is relevant as well.

I guess what i really wanna do is centralize the learning-process somewhat, give people the feeling of a school-process, and to a certain extend, formalize the learning-curve for hacking. Now, i know our definitions of hackers all differ, and this idea probably compromises with someone else's idea of the art, but for many, a more 'step-by-step' process encourages progression. I think...