Books and Sources for Beginners

Hi all, I’m a new aspiring hacker and right now I’m going through a couple of books about penetration testing but I’m not sure if does books are enough for becoming a hacker. I have no intention of becoming good at things in a short amount of time, I know that I have to spend a lot of time in order to just start being good at things but I want to go learn with the right way.

Are there any good sources that you recommend? It might be a book, a blog or something else but I believe that books are best learning sources for me. I believe this community will help me a lot along my path…

P.S: Sorry for my bad English. I’m not a native speaker

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A few hundred for now:

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You certainly seem like somebody who has a realistic view of learning, and will probably go far with your apt attitude.

This isn’t a book, but it is very well written and perfect for beginners. Pico’s wannabe articles are perfect.




By following these articles, and taking the direction, you can get pretty good pretty fast as long as you have a fairly decent understanding of basic hardware.

Good luck! Remember, the IRC has usually always got somebody on, solving problems, or solving understanding is super useful there. I learned a tonne from @IoTh1nkN0t in the early days about the stack. I’m sure he remembers it too!

Have a good one!

- pry0cc

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There is a link within there leading to the “CS50” course at Harvard. It’s like Computer Science 101, it gives basic knowledge on programming, encryption, forensics, how RAM works, networking and more.
It’s not in-depth, but it’s very broad and gives you an overview of most fields required to become a master hacker.

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Honestly, the best way (in my opinion) to learn this kind of thing is via CTFs (Capture the Flag competitions). They’re a great way to network and learn how to break into systems, plus if you’re good enough, some prize money might be involved too.

Feel free to join any of the ranked competitions here.

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Jan Wikholm wrote his experiences down and recorded them in a vlog from day 0 till his certificate of the OSCP. Tells you what he focussed on and what he used to attain his OSCP certificate.
As said above, he learned loads from CTF’s.
https://localhost.exposed/path-to-oscp/

If you are new to linux and pen-testing, this wargames site is good to start with: http://overthewire.org/wargames/

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Thank you all for your advices. I’ll read Jan Wikholm’s experiences and I’ve decided to spend more time on CTF’s but is there a specific CTF site/contest you recommend for beginners? I have overthewire.org as an option right now.

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For others reading this…try these:


Hack The Box :: Penetration Testing Labs

Is actually really good. Helped me to get around few things.
HackThisSite does not approve new members, it redirect me on registration too many times for a few weeks now.

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This was really helpful and appreciated! :pray:

i reccomend to practice hacking and cybersecurity concepts in ctf games. a good beginner friendly one is overthewire. also, practice on some virtual machines on vulrnhub and hackmyvm.

GOOD JOB!!! As a beginner learned a lot