How to Hack

If you want to learn how to hack there are a few steps you can take to get you well on your way to becoming an ethical hacker.

The first thing you need to understand is that this is not an overnight process and is an ongoing process to make sure you don’t end up a script kiddie. By far the first and most important step you need to take is to set up your own lab so that you have something to hack and don’t get arrested for it.

I created a how-to guide to get you set up quickly.

I suggest going with Kali Linux just because it already has most of the tools you will possibly need installed right on the operating system. It's built for this so you won't find anything better on your journey of finding out how to hack.

After getting your lab together which is the most important thing the next thing you need to do is really learn how things work in your penetration-testing lab. This means learning as much as you possibly can about TCP/IP and how networks work and learning the OSI Model and how it works.

For many this part is boring and you want to get right into hacking. I encourage you not to jump right in or you will end up a tree with no roots. You will in essence be a script kidding without learning what is going on behind the scenes. You will never really know how to hack without getting these basics.

You really need to become familiar with your pentesting lab. That means adding more operating systems to it that you can run tests against it such as Windows XP or Windows 2003. You also want to download metasploitable which is a linux based operating system that is designed to be weak. So, when you start running tests you will actually be able to run exploits and the like that will work and gives you a chance to see how everything would work in a real world attach scenario.

You also should really become familiar with some of the more popular tools such as nmap, Metasploit and OpenVAS.

You need to learn some basic programming fundamentals. As you get familiar with your pentesting lab you will run into scenarios where basic programming skills are required. A perfect example of this is you are running an exploit in Metasploit but the exploit isn’t specific to what you need done. At that point you may need to modify it so a basic understanding of Ruby would help you with this.

You don't need to become a full on programmer but you do need to understand on whats happening so that you can tweak if you need.

Last but not least you need to enter some capture the flags. That means that you need to put your new learned skills up against some fellow newbs in order to see how good you really are and of course increase your skill level.

These are super fun and at the same time you are increasing your skill level dramatically. Get out there and see what they are about. You will find tons of them by a quick simple google search of "capture the flag".