In computer security, a hacker is someone who focuses on security mechanisms of computer and network systems. There are communities and shared cultures of expert programmers and networking wizards that trace its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments.
The members of this culture were the first "hackers." Breaking into computers and phone systems have come to symbolize hacking in popular culture, but this culture is much more complicated and moralistic than most people know. To become a hacker, learning basic hacking techniques, how to think like a hacker, and how to gain respect within the ethical hacking community.
As the hacker is among the most skilled information technology disciplines, it requires a wide knowledge of IT technologies and techniques. To truly be a great hacker, one must master many skills. Don't be discouraged if you don't have all the skills I list here, but rather use this list as a starting ground for what you need to study and master in the near future.
1. Fundamental skills
It probably goes without saying that to become a hacker you need some basic computer skills. These skills go beyond the ability to create a Word document or cruise the Internet. You need to be able to use the command line in Windows, edit the registry, and set up your networking parameters. Many of these basic skills can be acquired in a basic computer skills course like A+.
You need to understand the basics of networking, such as the DHCP, NAT, Subnetting, Routers and Switches, VLANs, OSI model, MAC addressing, ARP, and many other.
As we are often exploiting these technologies, the better you understand how they work, the more successful you will be. If you want to be able to proficiently hack databases, you will need to understand databases and how they work. This includes the SQL language. I would also recommend the mastery of one of the major DBMS's such SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL.
2. Linux skills
It is extremely critical to develop Linux skills to become a hacker. Nearly all the tools you'll use as a hacker are developed for Linux and Linux gives us capabilities that we don't have using Windows.
When using Linux, we often need to install new software, a script, or numerous large files. To make things easier on us, these files are usually compressed and combined together into a single file with a .tar extension, which makes them easier to download, since it's one smaller file.
Managing hard drives in Linux is crucial to understanding your system and its operation as well as understanding the system you are exploiting or conducting a forensic analysis on. Linux has numerous commands that can provide us with information, control, and management of hard drives, and in this tutorial, we will examine a number of the most important ones.
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3. Security and Technologies
A good hacker understands security concepts and technologies. The only way to overcome the roadblocks established by the security admins is to be familiar with them. The hacker must understand such things as PKI (public key infrastructure), SSL (secure sockets layer), IDS (intrusion detection system), firewalls, etc.
The beginner hacker can acquire many of these skills in a basic security course such as Security+. Snort has many capabilities and configurations, but we want an IDS that can be used in a secure, professional way to alert us of intrusions. To do so, we will need to send our alerts to a database where we can analyze them. We will be setting up a print spooler specifically designed for Snort called Barnyard2 and using it to send the data to a MySQL database.
Barnyard2 is very CPU-intensive for any application. This is particularly true for Snort, and since we want to dedicate as much of our resources to packet capture and analysis as possible, we would like to lay off as much of these CPU-intensive tasks as we can.
4. Wireless Technologies
In order to be able to hack wireless, you must first understand how it works. Things like the encryption algorithms (WEP, WPA, WPA2), the four-way handshake, and WPS. In addition, understanding such as things as the protocol for connection and authentication and the legal constraints on wireless technologies.
To really understand how to hack Wi-Fi, we need to dispense with basic terms and technology. To begin, the access point that sends out the radio frequency (RF) signal is known as the AP. These APs are capable of sending out signals (between 2.4 and 5 Ghz) that comply with a number of different standards. These standards are known as 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n. In the very near future, we'll see a new standard that's tentatively named 802.11ac.
From the perspective of the hacker, wireless security technologies are among the most pertinent features. Multiple security technologies have been deployed in Wi-Fi to make an inherently insecure technology secure. Our attack approach will depend upon which of these security technologies is being deployed.
5. Scripting
Without scripting skills, the hacker will be relegated to using other hackers' tools. This limits your effectiveness. Every day a new tool is in existence loses effectiveness as security admins come up with defenses.
To develop your own unique tools, you will need to become proficient at least in one of the scripting languages including the BASH shell. These should include one of Perl, Python, or Ruby, and of course it is the most available on Linux operating system and its various distributions.
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6. Web databases
If you want to be able to proficiently hack databases, you will need to understand databases and how they work. This includes the SQL language. I would also recommend the mastery of one of the major DBMS's such SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL.
Web applications are probably the most fertile ground for hackers in recent years. The more you understand about how web applications work and the databases behind them, the more successful you will be. In addition, you will likely need to build your own website for phishing and other nefarious purposes.
The beginner hacker must understand TCP/IP basics, but to rise to the intermediate level, you must understand in intimate details the TCP/IP protocol stack and fields. These include how each of the fields (flags, window, df, tos, seq, ack, etc.) in both the TCP and IP packet can be manipulated and used against the victim system to enable MitM attacks, among other things.
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