How To Become A Hacker[13]

since first publishing this page, i've gotten several requests a week (often several a day) from people to "teach me all about hacking". unfortunately, i don't have the time or energy to do this; my own hacking projects, and traveling as an open-source advocate, take up 110% of my time.

even if i did, hacking is an attitude and skill you basically have to teach yourself. you'll find that while real hackers want to help you, they won't respect you if you beg to be spoon-fed everything they know.

learn a few things first. show that you're trying, that you're capable of learning on your own. then go to the hackers you meet with specific questions.

if you do email a hacker asking for advice, here are two things to know up front. first, we've found that people who are lazy or careless in their writing are usually too lazy and careless in their thinking to make good hackers — so take care to spell correctly, and use good grammar and punctuation, otherwise you'll probably be ignored. secondly, don't dare ask for a reply to an isp account that's different from the account you're sending from; we find people who do that are usually thieves using stolen accounts, and we have no interest in rewarding or assisting thievery.

the best way for you to get started would probably be to go to a lug (linux user group) meeting. you can find such groups on the ldp general linux information page; there is probably one near you, possibly associated with a college or university. lug members will probably give you a linux if you ask, and will certainly help you install one and get started.

any age at which you are motivated to start is a good age. most people seem to get interested between ages 15 and 20, but i know of exceptions in both directions.

that depends on how talented you are and how hard you work at it. most people can acquire a respectable skill set in eighteen months to two years, if they concentrate. don't think it ends there, though; if you are a real hacker, you will spend the rest of your life learning and perfecting your craft.

if you're asking this question, it almost certainly means you're thinking about trying to hack under microsoft windows. this is a bad idea in itself. when i compared trying to learn to hack under windows to trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast, i wasn't kidding. don't go there. it's ugly, and it never stops being ugly.

there are specific problems with visual basic and c#; mainly that they're not portable. though there are prototype open-source implementations of these languages, the applicable ecma standards don't cover more than a small set of their programming interfaces. on windows most of their library support is proprietary to a single vendor (microsoft); if you aren't extremely careful about which features you use — more careful than any newbie is really capable of being — you'll end up locked into only those platforms microsoft chooses to support. if you're starting on a unix, much better languages with better libraries are available. python, for example.

visual basic is especially awful. like other basics it's a poorly-designed language that will teach you bad programming habits. no, don't ask me to describe them in detail; that explanation would fill a book. learn a well-designed language instead.

one of those bad habits is becoming dependent on a single vendor's libraries, widgets, and development tools. in general, any language that isn't fully supported under at least linux or one of the bsds, and/or at least three different vendors' operating systems, is a poor one to learn to hack in.

no. anyone who can still ask such a question after reading this faq is too stupid to be educable even if i had the time for tutoring. any emailed requests of this kind that i get will be ignored or answered with extreme rudeness.

this is cracking. go away, idiot.

this is cracking. get lost, moron.

this is cracking. begone, cretin.