How do I become a hacker?
That infamous question again.
This is all possible with some hard work and diligence. It will require a lot of reading and a lot more doing. It will require some guessing and permutating different approaches, skills or solutions. You will have to look at a problem from different perspectives. If one thing doesn’t work, you’ll have to scrap it and try something else. You have to be persistent. You will have to disregard the manual. The books as well as what you are told and taught, is often not correct or even true.
Also humanists and universalists feel, ‘Anyone can do anything.’ Ok. Within limits. However, if you can sit through a high school math class and pass, or, read a math book on your own and get it, then you can be a hacker too.
You do need to have a certain mentality. Most people will say, either you have it or you don’t. In my humble opinion, while some people have those traits innately, they were just born that way; still, like charm, these traits can be acquired.
Oh yes, charm and charisma can be taught. Being a leader can be taught. Being brave can be taught. All sorts of traits can be taught and acquired. The expensive private schools and military training are a testament to that fact. I maintain, hacking is no different. In the chapter, “Getting Into Gear”, I discuss how to develop the necessary traits and mindset to be a hacker.
Then, there is knowledge. Several of the chapters will discuss the requisite knowledge required. I will discuss how much knowledge of each given subject is relevant. Supplemental readings and study subjects will be recommended.
Computers are a fast moving industry. New products are coming out all the time. Hardware and software can become quickly outdated. While the general ideas & methodologies in this book will not become outdated, specific hardware & software will. You will have to learn to learn. You will have to keep on learning.
Then, you have to do something with that knowledge.
You will need a lab. I will discuss how to build one and build it inexpensively. How to legally acquire lots of software for free. There is some hardware that may be available for free, especially for students.
Building the lab will be an experience unto itself. You will acquire some hacking experience and skills just by building your lab. You will come across problems. Things will not work as planned or designed. You will have to fix that. Your first hacking experience.
Once your lab is built, you will be ready to start hacking your network; your systems; your Operating Systems; browsers; web servers; intranet, etc. You get the idea.
The chapter on drone hacking is a step by step example of hacking. I had almost no prior knowledge about this subject before writing this book. Drone hacking was intriguing. I wondered how they did that? Then, I found out. I will take you along, step by step, how I learned about drones and how to hack them. Then, you can do the same with other technologies.
In fact, there were a lot of things that I learned to hack, to write this book.
Next, I will discuss tools.
When I took engineering in college, I had a professor, Joe Washington. He had everyone take a 2 credit course. Design a machine. The point of the course was, that you will use lots of off the shelf products, parts, components, that have ratings that meet your specifications. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. You don’t need to forge the iron to make your own hammer. Go to Home Depot and buy one!
You will be using a lot of software tools that have already been written. You probably won’t need to program these tools. Although sometimes, you might want or need to write / program your own custom tool.
For example, there are tools that do a “dictionary attack”. It is one of the basic rules of passwords, not to use words and names. Yet, people still do it. A dictionary attack uses a dictionary; goes through all the words in the dictionary and tries each word as a password. This can also includes names of people or places. You would be very surprised how well this works. Cracked one of my own Windows machines in 5 minutes. I didn’t write it! I downloaded it and tested it!
Why should you write a dictionary attack? Often enough, you should not write it. Just get a tool and run the program as needed. But, you may need to tweak it. In a real life scenario, a target may come from a particular place or ethnicity, which will require a special dictionary with Nordic heroes, communist leaders, biological names of sea shells, characters from Dickens, Klingon…the list goes on.
This would be a good time to discuss “script kiddies” vs. hackers. Script kiddies is a term that hackers and computer security personnel use to refer to those who use publicly available program scripts for hacking, without having any real knowledge of how the script works.
In addition, script kiddies can not come up with such scripts on their own. It isn’t the use of a script or tool that marks a “script kiddie”. It is your lack of understanding and the inability to make own tool—if needed, that marks a script kiddies.
Script kiddies can hack only within the limited space, the special circumstances, of the script. Change the circumstance and they can not hack. This is not real hacking. They can not figure things out on their own. To be a real hacker, you need to go beyond being a script kiddie.
Once your lab is set up; you have gone beyond being a script kiddie and have some experience hacking. Then, I will discuss the kinds of things, breaches, vulnerabilities and exploits that people look for.
Lastly, I will discuss how money is made, by being a cyber security researcher and forensic digital analyst.
Now, you can be a hacker for fun and for profit.
Cyber Security 411 