You should learn THIS before HACKING

Hacking, Penetration Testing and Red Teaming is a broad field and requires huge amounts of skills in order to succeed. If you want to learn hacking efficiently, then you should first learn some other skills.

In this article I will describe hard and soft skills, which you have to learn, before hacking.

Hard Skills

If you want to hack something, then you should know, how it works.

For example you want to hack a web application, then you should definitly know how web apps and the Internet works. This includes the technologies used to develop web apps, as well as Internet protocols, which are used when interacting with a web application, such as HTTP.

This means, if you want to be a Penetration Tester for a certain field, then you should learn, how that domain works, and how development for that domain is done.

IT Skills that every hacker should have

Furthermore every true hacker should have fundamental IT knowledge. This includes Networking. Because everything is connected, you should have knowledge in Networking. This includes, how the Internet works, the ISO OSI Layers, TCP/IP and different Network components, such as Routers, Switcher and so on.

Secondly you should have knowledge about Operating System. You will use an Operating System during your engagements. And also when finding vulnerabilities in different Services, you will be interacting with operating systems. So it is important to have a good knowledge about operating systems, otherwise you won’t be able to use your own tools. Skills you should master are definitly Linux, Windows and Active Directory, if you want to go into Web Application Penetration Testing, Network Penetration Testing or Red Teaming. If you want to pentest Mobile devices, then you should know iOS and Android.

Databases are used to store data. They are used across many enterprises and by many applications. So having a good knowledge of databases is something mandatory.

Also I think you should also have Coding skills. With that skill you can always double check existing exploits and tweek them to your needs. Furthermore, you can write your own tools, so you are a lot more indepentend from other hackers.

Soft Skills

Hacking is not a one-man thing. You will need some soft skills in order to sucess in your carreer.

You should have strong people, speeking and presentation skills. As a Penetration Tester you need to show your results in front of an audience. That audience might not be technical, so you should have the people skills yto understand your audience and you should have speeking and presentation skills, so your audience gets value from the findings.

Furthermore you should have organizational skills. An engagement might go over months, with a huge team. You should have the skills to organize your engagement over these periods of time.

Also you should be creative and a critical thinker. Only by being creative, you will find ways to get in, that were not intended. As a critical thinker, you will always question your choices, which will help you find the optimal and best way in.

I hope this article helped you and you won value from it. If so then clab for this article and follow to me! Thanks!