Hello, my Aspiring hackers, Welcome to the most clickbated topic of the cyber-security AKA Hacking world, “How to Become a Hacker?”. Hacking has always been fascinating to us, a guy in a black hoodie tries to take down the government and sophisticated systems. Trying to hack into anything and destroying it and turning it into ashes. Like a superhero, but one who usually remains in dark, like Batman.
Hacking and Hacker has been always been a mystery to us, like some teenage boy in his parents’ basement, who looks geeky, nerd, highly-introverted. But in the night time, he goes with a hacker handle like “Sexyboi7000” and brings down and peeps into people’s life like desperation at its top-peak. But it’s not the case, in reality. In reality, hackers are cool-ass nerds, geeks, despo but they are cool-ass, highly introverted but they are cool-ass with black hoodie of course, and yeah, they are not ugly or weird as they are being portrayed usually, at least I am not. Well, I am like Chris Hemsworth from Black hat.
So, Today we are going through the ultimate guide of How to become a hacker in 2020, we will guide you through the steps to become a hacker and what skills do you need, in order to do so. So, let’s get started.
Beginner Skills
Beginner Skills are not very demanding if you are good with computers and you know basic IT stuff like how to browse the internet, how to set up accounts on different platforms, what is an operating system, how to troubleshoot minute problems, how to install software etc.
If you are good with computers and all, and you know most of the stuff here, which you already know, I should assume that if you are browsing through this post, you should know about computers basically, its parts and components rather than just using it for movies, games and other things which I can’t talk about here (Porn).
Intermediate Skills
Intermediate skills are the skills from where you will take a step for real in the hacking world. Hacking is not a magic, it comprises of skills and skills can be learned, just like magic. Well, so let’s dive into the number of skills, we should know in order to become a hacker.
- Linux – Linux is one of the most important things, you should know as a hacker. But why? Because Linux is open-source and most of the hacking tools and support are for Linux, it is really good and far better than windows like OS for hacking. A very good understanding of the Linux platform is very very essential for a hacker as most of the web servers run Linux. And believe me, Linux is Love when you start using it. Plus, a number of hacking distro or OS is built on Linux like Kali Linux, Parrot OS, Black arch Linux, etc. So, Linux is a must.
- Networking – Networking Skills are very very very important for any hacker. If you don’t know how things in working in a network, how they are set-up. You can’t do much then, Without Networking knowledge, you will be like a script-kiddie who just runs the tool but doesn’t know what to do with the information gathered by the tool, and if sometimes he/she ran into a problem, he is not even able to look up to it and troubleshoot it.
Networking is very important, at least you should know what ports are, and you should be familiar with terms like DNS, DHCP, IPV4, IPV6, Switch, MAC, ARP, NAT, Bridge, TCP/IP, etc. These are some terminologies which is the bare minimum of the networking field. Without Networking, you can’t know about how things work and without that, you can’t become a hacker because if you don’t even know how a thing works, how can you exploit it.
- Programming – Programming is not very recommended usually for people who just came from scratch into hacking, without any computer science background. But programming, not only helps you to write certain scripts but will also help you to analyze the code of websites and other programs. A good Programming background can help you a lot while doing pen-testing. You can learn Programming from our website from HERE.
- Security Terminologies – Security Terms like Malware, Virus, Worms, Rootkits, Payloads, etc. You should have very good knowledge about these things because most of the time, we deal with these only.
These were some of the most needed skills, a hacker should have a list. But this is a little broad about things, I didn’t tell you actual concepts. Don’t worry, I have summarized the hacking in three genres basically, when a beginner step into this field, he got overwhelmed by the amount of study and things that have to be done here. So, we can classify broadly as:
- Web App hacking – Web Application hacking, this type of hacking is most popular, and in most demand everywhere whether it’s pen-testing or Bug Bounty, You will mostly found yourself exploiting web application vulnerabilities. The most common are SQLi, XSS, CSRF, etc. You can find a list of top 10 web Vulnerability at OWASP TOP 10, HERE.
Tools used – Burpsuite, Nmap, Metasploit, Dirbuster, SQLmap, Hydra, etc. There are hundreds of more tools but these are some famous ones.
- System Hacking – System Hacking is one of the most popular hacking between boyfriends. You don’t get it right, The boyfriends who want to hack into their Girlfriend’s Phone or PC is unknowingly giving the example of system hacking. In system Hacking, we generally exploit a computer system. If talking about Market share of OS then on desktop we have Windows, OS X, and Linux. So that’s why the windows are exploited more. And in mobile phones, we generally have Android and IOS. And that’s we have to particularly exploit.
Tools used – Metasploit, SEToolkit, Powershell Empire, Mimikatz, etc. Metasploit is the most famous tool for system hacking as there are thousands of payloads available in the Metasploit framework.
- Wireless hacking – Yes, Our very own Wi-Fi hacking, shoutout to all you guys, who wants to hack your neighbor’s wifi. This one is for you. Wireless hacking is mostly comprised of Wifi-Hacking and Bluetooth Hacking. It could also include sniffing the network traffic for advanced attacks like ARP poisoning, DNS spoofing, etc.
Tools used – aircrack-ng suite, Wifi-Pumpkin, Evil Twin, Wireshark, TCPdump, Ettercap, MITMf, etc.
These according to me, is the topmost hacking genres, most things fall under these, like DDOS, etc. and I know there are a lot more things like Hardware hacking, USB rubber ducky, etc. IMSI catcher, stingray, SS7 but those topics are advanced and require a lot of brainpower than Charles Xavier.
Advanced Skills
Advanced skills are those skills that are fairly advance and usually include development rather than exploiting like before. Some skills are:
- Scripting – Scripting is one of the most useful in terms of pen-testing through a system. Scripting like BASH and Python is usually used. In order to a certain task, hackers usually built automated scripts in order to make it convenient for them to hack into the system.
- Malware development – Hackers develop custom malware for their work, they keep in mind all the basic process of malware and use evasion techniques in order to get away with the surveillance of antivirus programs. Malware development usually involves languages like C and C++ as they are very low-level programming languages, which can help in getting results faster.
- Reverse Engineering – Reverse Engineering other malware, codes, and application is one of the skills an experienced person has. They generally look up to different codes and try to decode how it is made and what it is purpose.
- Cryptography – Everything is encrypted nowadays with some sort of Algorithm. A hacker could either develop its own algorithm or study the working of various cryptographic algorithms to know how they work and how to crack them.
That was some of the skills, a hacker should have. There is no hard and fast rule in hacking. Hacking is beautiful because it starts with curiosity and ends at curiosity. This list of skills is not to frighten you about the course or something, that these are the must know. You try it yourself, learning is never-ending. Develop an interest and try to find out about various topics and concepts. Practice it, and Within no time, you will be great, and of course better than yesterday. If you want to check out more about Hacking you can Go HERE. That’s all for today guys, This is Dolores Haze, signing off, I will meet you in the next one, Till then “Happy Hacking”.
