Neophyte's Guide - I Want To Break Into Things
I Want To Break Into Things
There are a bunch of complete morons out there who have taken the "hacker"
name and turned it into some sideshow 'goodie 2 shoes' nonsense.
Look - hacking is ultimately about breaking into computers. I'm sorry, that's
what it always has been - that's what it always will be. I don't care if you
call yourself "whitehat" or "blackhat". That's just being racist. Hacking is
hacking is hacking. Either you're a hacker and you break into computers or
you're not. Go jerk off on your face some more if you don't like it.
/end rant
With that said - you need:
- Knowledge of how things work.
Hacking is remarkably hard if you don't know how computers work or
what's going on behind the scenes. That is unless you download someone
else's exploit script. That kind of behavior is called being a script
kiddy. You won't get any respect if that's what you do.
- Tools to poke around and dig up information
How do you expect to find a hole if you don't look for it?
- Tools to actually perform the hack
Hacking looks magical and exciting to those who don't understand it.
Once the 'trick' is understood it's actually quite boring.
- An actual exploit
Unless you plan on e-mailing the administrator and ask for sufficient
privileges to do what you want to do you'll need a way of getting them
on your own. This is the meat of a hack.
- Patience
Hacking is like killing someone. If you're in a rush then you'll either
fail entirely or get caught afterwards. Also it's most enjoyable if
done slowly 
.
- Links:
Insecure Programming by example
Phrack
Uninformed
Linux System Calls