Prime advice for young hackers

Hacking has become more mainstream in recent years, with a rise in the number of young people who have chosen to pursue a career in the field. While it can be a rewarding and lucrative career, it can also be a difficult one if you don’t know the ropes.

Here’s some of the most important advice for young hackers who are just getting started:

You got to start it doing now

Erase the following questions from your mind:

What should I study? What do I need to learn first?

Pick something that you want to do and do it now. When I was 10 years old, I wanted to hack GTA San Andreas so that I am able to jump into the water like in one of their cut scenes.

jumping into water hack in GTA Sand Andreas

That got me started. Once you get into the loop of what I want to do, learning new stuff, tweaking, adjusting and enhancing comes as a natural phenomenon. Nobody is going to spoon-feed you. You have to learn how to spoon-feed yourself. Remember those days in college when you could not properly learn because the teacher was bad and you had to do it all by yourself and start deconstructing the curriculum but also how the brain of the teacher works? Well, you have to do it all over again. That’s reverse engineering.

The what should I read dilemma

But what book should I read?

Remember: books work for some people For others: they simply don’t You can also skim through Why books don’t work. I found that reading is a lot less valuable when you are just starting out. The great thing about computer science and hacking is that you don’t need any kind of special equipment to do your job. This picture below represents the setup of the guy who was running the emote botnet which was one of the biggest botnet crime rings in the world.

There is no fluff, no RGB pc, no nothing. All you need to get started is just a laptop and an internet connection. See Compression progress. russianhack

The proper questions to ask: What did I do that is right? What did I do that is wrong?

Start small. Birdhouse small.

How do I become a carpenter? Start building your little birdhouse first. You can’t expect to have that overnight success. Small successes. Small successes. Small successes.

Remember: I started learning how to code by trying to make my GTA San Andreas character jump into water using a different mod. Build on the shoulders of giants. Good hackers copy. Great hackers steal. Steal like a hacker. Get yourself into the loop.

“We’re constantly tweaking and optimizing the letterheads, the shipping method, the packaging, the presentation, even the language used by the attorneys in the letters.” — source

Hacking Counter-Strike: the bunnyhop

How do I get into native reverse engineering? After graduating from my GTA days, I wanted to hack Counter-Strike as it was one of the most popular games at that time.

Process:

If I want to write a kernel exploit, I need to have a basic understanding of the principles of operating systems. If I want to do bug bounties and get those big crits, I need to have a good understanding of HTML Javascript, HTTP and the protocols that are used in web technologies. I’m not saying you have to become a C/Assembly/Kernel programming expert. I’m just saying you need to know at least the basics so you’re not wasting everyone’s time.

Online resources

This goes without saying you can pretty much learn anything on Google nowadays. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

See How to “Google It” Like A Content Creator — principles stay put.

Wrong way: “how to become a hacker” This is too broad. You want specificity.

Proposal: “how do i exploit a cross-site scripting” Look up a specific piece of knowledge or skill that you want to learn. If it was that easy everyone would just be doing it. It’s up to you to put them together to have the skills to be considered a real hacker.

Friends and connections

The journey is going to be a lot easier if you have friends to go along with you. - into gaming hacks? Hang out with people who are into gaming hacks. Post on their subreddits, discords, quoras and stackoverflows. - deliver, share, get feedback, criticize, repeat - find someone who’s more experienced than you and indirectly make him your mentor - avoid people who are famous or really busy/important because those people usually don’t have that much time in their day to dedicate to answering your questions - on the other hand, avoiding famous people is not a general rule; you can also adopt a position where you can try emailing them and you might get a surprise - you have to eventually you know move up to heavier and heavier weights and similarly when you’re you know learning you need to learn how to do more interesting and more challenging thing - assume that the problem is solvable and that there is a solution you haven’t found yet

Noob thinking = looking for validation from other people instead of skill

Hacking can be a rewarding and lucrative career, but it can also be a dangerous one if done incorrectly. Following these tips can help young hackers get started on the right foot. Developing strong ethical hacking skills, learning about network security, staying up-to-date on the latest security trends, and avoiding unnecessary risks.