Getting Started With Hacking
If you have stumbled across this gitbook and are at the start of your hacking journey, this may be useful for you.
There is a very prevalent myth within the industry that you need a computer science degree or you need to have some crazy 0-days or you need to have prior experience as a system admin, dev, techie etc.
You need none of those things!!! I know this because I have none of those things and yet am a professional pentester.
The most important thing is dedication and passion. I have a masters in Forensic Chemistry. My university degree had nothing to do with my job now, but I built these skills in my own time. It takes time and it can be daunting starting out with so much information and no direction. I had no mentors or guides or friends that taught me, I just used youtube and google and had many many frustrating nights / weekends.
If you have literally done nothing with security before and would like to get into it, these are my suggestions:
Read a guide on installing a Kali VM and follow it. This may require following a guide first on setting up VMware or Virtualbox to launch the VM.
Other wargames on the site can be used too if they interest you. Some get hard very fast, so I see it better to come back to these when you have other core skills.
Keep notes of useful things you learn like commands and what they do so you can refer to them later.
Watch conference talks. Things like Defcon, Blackhat, Bsides, Steelcon etc. The talks are usually uploaded. Find some you're interested in and watch. Even if you don't understand it all yet, it will help conjure an interest and at some point will make sense.
Use books like "Hacking: The Art of Exploitation", "The Hackers Playbook (1, 2 and 3. Dont just get 3, they all cover different things)", "The Web App Hackers Handbook".
With the points above, you would have gained a very wide and useful skillset for getting into pentesting. One recommendation I have is to contact the people recruiting for pentesting positions early. I sent out several emails essentially saying "I don't have the skills yet, but I would like to in a couple years so when I leave uni I can get this job. What do you recommend learning?". I got several helpful responses giving me great ideas and great resources.
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