How to Become a Hacker

How to Become a Hacker

I have written this post in response to the many who keep posting on programming and Linux groups asking how to become a hacker. If you are one of those, let me tell you straight, this post may be offensive, but it will tell you the truth, it gives you the red pill. After reading this guide, hopefully, you will know how to become a hacker.

What is a Hacker?

 

Here is the correct definition:

A person who learns the details of a programmable system and stretches its capacities.

As you can see, many people wanting to become a hacker don't even know what a hacker is! Today, the media have painted a hacker like this:

A bad guy was illegally breaks into a system with malicious thoughts.

If you see properly, the second definition is just an special case of the first. For someone to break into a system, s/he must know how the system has been created, moreover he must discover what others could not.

The person who studied the system and failed is a hacker; the person who successfully finds a problem in the system is a hacker; the person who writes a program to fix or exploit the insecure system is a hacker. But the person who uses the program written by the other person is not a hacker, s/he is a script-kiddie. And let me tell you, the people who post in on my beloved groups and dirties my news feed are script-kiddie. This term has, in fact, been deviced to insult such people.

The creators of a system try their best to make it as secure as possible. They heir professional hackers to check and fix their systems. But sometimes a more intelligent (bad) hacker finds something they couldn't; often releases a program which script-kiddies use.

But as soon as a defect is discovered, all good-willed people try to fix it. And the script-kiddie is left with a program that, presently, doesn't work. He must create a time machine and go back 20 years to hack the system.

Unless, lady luck is inclined towards you, or your target is an ignorant who doesn't care about security, you are gonna get nowhere if you are just a "script-kiddie."

This was the first part of the post for people who had all those misconception about hacking. In the next part I will cover what you can do if you really want to become a hacker. Please don't continue if you don't agree with the first part.

How to become a Hacker (the bad one)?

 

Becoming a hacker is not easy, you must be more intelligent and more educated than all those professional hackers who worked hard to secure the system. You must have all the skills which was required to build the system. If the system was written in a programming language you don't know, you must learn the language.

Eventually, you will realize, like I did, that being a bad guy is not a good idea. It is 100 * 100 times better to become a good guy; a hacker who helps. You will be respected, no one will doubt your knowledge, you will be more successful and be 200 times more happy.

Here is a general set of steps to become a good hacker:

• Learn to program well; aim to become the best programmer.
• Learn some common techniques employed by hackers.
• Write a lot of code.
• Try out what you learned.

Anyone following these steps sincerely will take at least 10 years to become a hacker. If that seems like a long time, you may continue what you have done till now: go around asking non-hackers, who pretend to be hackers, how to hack and at the end of the day decide to read this post again and start over. This is an infinite process and you will get nowhere!

See also:
Which Programming Language Should I Learn First
How To Hack Linux Using Dirty COW Exploit


Please point your friends here if they ask you how to hack. :-)