As with all material in this area, I must provide a few disclaimers.

  1. This article is meant for educational purposes only, and any use of this knowledge for any purpose is the choice of the reader.
  2. Jason Zerbe, his hosting provider, and any person with any relation to Jason with not be liable for any negative choices of readers.
  3. I, Jason Zerbe, do not condone the illegal applications of the knowledge presented. For more information on the hacker legal system from Agent Steal’s perspective, you can read a write-up he did in 1997 while incarcerated.
  4. This article may be freely reproduced, in whole or in part, provided acknowledgments are given to the author. Any reproduction for profit, or law enforcement use is prohibited.

That said, now for the goods. ;-]

I was exposed to computers as a user, first when I was four, but I never started investigating how they worked until my 13th birthday. I was granted one of my dad’s old computers to indefinitely borrow. For my 16th birthday I bought my own computer, with my own specifications, and my own money. In those three years I mastered the Windows API, gotten into Unix/Linux, worked through much of the Java API, experimented with C++, mastered various networking principles, and have an in depth knowledge of PHP, MySQL, the Apache and Lighttpd servers.

A few suggestions to get you started, taken from a (mostly) complete hacker howto created by Eric Steven Raymond.

  1. Learn how to program – From what I’ve heard and experienced it is best to know a combination of the following: Python, C/C++, Java, Perl or PHP, LISP. I still have zero experience in Python and Lisp …. ah more projects.
  2. Get an open source OS (operating systems) and know how to use it – My personal favorites are Debian, CentOS, and OpenBSD.
  3. Learn how the Internet functions and how to script HTML and now CSS – Do you know what http, ftp, imap, pop, and smtp are? How you are connected into the internet and how that technology works? HTML is the all encompassing mark-up for the internet. Learn it or become dependent on pathetic Microsoft-type generators. CSS is also vary handy to get the look and feel of your Web 2.0 creation just right.
  4. If you don’t have functional English, learn it – All of the source code that I have laid eyes on to date, is written in English syntax, the code and comments.

Once you are “in”, the status symbols of hacking culture are surprisingly counter-culture to the mainstream American thought process. To excerpt from Eric, “Specifically, hackerdom is what anthropologists call a gift culture. You gain status and reputation in it not by dominating other people, nor by being beautiful, nor by having things other people want, but rather by giving things away. Specifically, by giving away your time, your creativity, and the results of your skill.”

In the upcoming posts, I’ll probably be getting into a tutorial/how to phase of actual hacking.