On "The Offensive"
Greetings, everyone.
To cut to the meat of my question, where should I begin in regards to studying penetration testing?
A little background on "defense": I read an article on this site in regards to "cyber ninjitsu," which sparked my interest. Ever since, the subject of anonymity has been one that I've taken a grave interest in. I've been studying a lot on my own time on the subject of "anonymity." Having worked in the IT field for a few years, I've always been fascinated by how people stay anonymous on the internet. After recent study on several methods, and how they work (For example: VPN's that are located in third party countries -that have no requirement to log or keep records- possibly purchased with a disposable credit card, the chaining of VPN's using Virtual Machines, how encryption works through common applications such as TOR (and the vulnerabilities), just to name a few.
What I seem to be stuck on is "how does offense work?" "What information should i be researching to get a leg into penetration testing?"
I have a general gist of it. Common vulnerabilities that are exploited in unpatched machines, for example.
I'm not asking for a "how to" guide (just felt I should point this out). I'm more than willing to do the legwork. I guess I'm asking to be pointed in the right direction of what I should look into and understand more.
Skill wise, I have a few years of IT experience (worked with exchange and other windows servers, cisco switching, etc).
Any and all help is appreciated!