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Hacking: Where to begin


comcipher

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While learning programming languages is good, most are not as low-level as they need to be for certain attacks (overflows, TCP/IP-based attacks, forging and whatnot) that hackers can use, such as C with assembly code or assembly via hex within C coding... thus what I mean is the fundamentals of computer architecture will go a long way.

I suggest taking a class or two on computer architecture. I did and I designed several CPU's in the classes. Quite valuable IMHO.

Learn the fundamentals of assembly code -- the stack, registers, commands, stack arithmetic/offset, etc

Learn operating systems (memory management, scheduling/priority, etc), sys calls for Linux/Windows (hell even vm_splice() wasn't found to have a problem until recently)

If you want to learn cryptography then I suggest a few classes:

Linear Algebra (the foundation you need)

Discrete Mathematics (lower division, not bad for freshmen-level and up)

Introduction to advanced math (an upper division course I took)

Number Theory (this is the big one, the formal of foundation, IMO, of cryptographic design)

I don't have any links as I am tired and lazy..most of that stuff I mentioned I learned while earning my degree.

A good read was "Hacking: The Art of Exploitation" (shellcode, tcp fun, cryptography, etc)

"Gray Hat Hacking" -- get the 1st and 2nd editions because they DO DIFFER in content!

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  • 4 weeks later...
For all the people who are new at this whole “computer†thing and don’t really understand what hacking is all about and where to begin, I offer up these links to some great places to start learning.

Please contribute to this thread and I will keep it up to date. Probably should be made sticky.

News:

www.digg.com

www.slashdot.org

Presentations:

http://www.lessig.org/freeculture/free.html <-- A speech given talking all about the problems facing culture when dealing with copyright and other digital laws.

Podcasts:

http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm <-- This is fantastic for people who are new to the field. If you have the time or motivation, go back and listen to them from day 1, they assume you know very little if anything and hit on all of the major topics in the security field. Fantastic show.

IPTV Shows:

http://www.binrev.com/ <-- Produce a good IPTV show and also have forums that are usually helpful.

http://www.hak5.org <--- Duh....

Tutorial sites:

http://www.remote-exploit.org <-- Pretty good resources, some very nice video tutorials on various exploits. Defiantly check out the tutorial section.

http://www.irongeek.com/ <-- Excellent tutorials/information/articles.

http://www.antionline.com/ <-- Tutorials, tools and forums full of helpful people.

Programming Related:

Teach Yourself C in 21 Days: http://neonatus.net/C/index.html

Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days: http://cma.zdnet.com/book/c++/

The Art of Assembly Language Programming: http://maven.smith.edu/~thiebaut/ArtOfAssembly/artofasm.html

Microsoft Developers Network: http://msdn.microsoft.com

----Web Programming:

HTML: http://www.w3schools.com

PHP: http://www.php.net

ASP.NET: http://www.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1

SQL: http://www.mysql.com

Perl: http://www.perl.com/

Python: http://www.python.org

Security Related:

SecurityFocus: http://www.securityfocus.com/

Milw0rm: http://www.milw0rm.com

SecurityForest: http://securityforest.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Its very helpful information thanks a lot.

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vxchaos.official.ws

A fantastic site where you can find older exploits, virii source code, e-books and lots more.

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as any hacker should do, download linux. its a good OS for hackers. and the mindset. but just incase anyone wants to try it before they go ahead and permanently delete windows off there computer, wubi is a good installer to run both. dual boot option. so if you want to become a hacker, take a stab at linux to see if you like it or that its compatible:

http://wubi-installer.org/

also i like this tutorial:

http://catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

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Long time listener, first time caller. :) I have a problem with verbose, so I'll try my best to keep this short.

I've started the C++ in 21 days tutorial, but came to an issue with syntax. I'm using "c++ (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-8ubuntu4) 4.5.2", writing the code in geany (is this a decent enough editor? I got it when learning Perl last month and it's worked well for me so far, but I'd rather start out learning something useful in an actual working environment than make bad habits.)

When compiling my script I come across the problem

~/begcplusplus$ g++ hello.cpp -o hello
hello.cpp: In function ‘int main()’:
hello.cpp:5:2: error: ‘cout’ was not declared in this scope

The code listed to use in the tutorial is:

1: #include &lt;iostream.h&gt;
2:
3:
4: int main();
5: {
6: cout &lt;&lt;"Hello World!\n";
7:     return 0;
8: }

I'm using Natty Narwhal, and would like to continue to use some version of *nix throughout my semi-self-educating.. may someone point me in the right direction? I do feel like an idiot here, and I have used google, but I'm not sure what exactly I should be looking for, is this a syntax error? compiler? my c++ is updated... I get the same errors when trying to compile directly in geany. I understand that I will always have compilation errors and will have to figure them out, but on a Hello World script.. really? Can I at least make it to variables before having to worry about this?

Thank you for taking the time to read this, sorry about the wordiness, but I did give you a fair warning. :P

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So, after a bit more research, I have found my answer. I was missing the line:

using namespace std;

Which should go directly under "#include <iostream>"

I'm not quite sure why this tutorial does not contain this information. Not to be deterred, I will continue on my journey.. maybe I'll get a wild hair and rewrite this book using the perl documentation I learned with as a template if I am constantly having to search for answers as I go along. Should someone come behind me and wish to learn, but has any issues, feel free to PM me- I would be more than happy to provide whatever assistance I can.

I would also like to make note that <iostream.h> is incorrect in C++, this would be correct in C.

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So, after a bit more research, I have found my answer. I was missing the line:

using namespace std;

Which should go directly under "#include <iostream>"

I'm not quite sure why this tutorial does not contain this information. Not to be deterred, I will continue on my journey.. maybe I'll get a wild hair and rewrite this book using the perl documentation I learned with as a template if I am constantly having to search for answers as I go along. Should someone come behind me and wish to learn, but has any issues, feel free to PM me- I would be more than happy to provide whatever assistance I can.

I would also like to make note that <iostream.h> is incorrect in C++, this would be correct in C.

It's an old, pre-standard iostream. Visual Studio used to handle it but yes, it's not something you want to use. If you want some other stuff, hit up youtube and look up StanfordUniversity. They have CS 106 lectures that's mainly on C++ so that may give you some additional insight.

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Hey-Row SKs and 7337s. Hacking is NOT an overnight ability. I R NOT JOHNNY 5... but still I LOVE INPUT! (for those of you that are old enough to understand the reference...)

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