How do I become more than a "script kiddie" (white hat)

L

lordsegan

Gawd
Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
624
Right now I feel that my skills are somewhere around that of an intermediate script kiddie.

In GUI OSes I am pretty amazing fixing things and securing things. My latest project is a fully virtualized firewall appliance/computer. I am amazingly good at googling things and coming up with answers. And I can add to existing instructions (I recently hacked apart a slipstream'ed WHS disc and updated it for the latest release, required dos editing).

But when it comes to commandline OSes, and using tools that are not prebuilt I generally start to lose my ground.

Without going back to school, whats a good way to accelerate my learning?

(PS, this is not for a career, I already have an non-tech professional license. However, I may start using increasingly security/tech knowledge as it relates to my other profession to assist with compliance related decisions.).
 
if you don't want to leave the windows world, learn powershell. It is heavily integrated into windows 7 and all major Microsoft (and alot of partner) server software. It is extremely powerful and microsoft seems to be making less packaged tools and just referring you to the powershell apis for whatever the task may be.

I am sure there is a good book but i have never looked for one. Check this out though: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee221100.aspx
 
Just keep playing. You don't become a leet hacker over night. It's a progression of skills. Once you've had experience working with a lot of different technologies you'll start to see the bigger picture and get a better understanding of how things work at a low level and how they work together.

You're going to be pretty limited if don't know UNIX. Start with simple things. Build an Apache web server on Ubuntu. Build Sendmail server on OpenBSD. Build a DNS server on Redhat. Build a Linux workstation and either start compiling or importing different security tools and run them against the web/mail/dns servers you built. If you struggle, keep at it. By working through a problem you'll be forced to understand how things work at a lower level. Once you understand that you're on your way.
 
Madnes5 said:
Just keep playing. You don't become a leet hacker over night. It's a progression of skills. Once you've had experience working with a lot of different technologies you'll start to see the bigger picture and get a better understanding of how things work at a low level and how they work together.

You're going to be pretty limited if don't know UNIX. Start with simple things. Build an Apache web server on Ubuntu. Build Sendmail server on OpenBSD. Build a DNS server on Redhat. Build a Linux workstation and either start compiling or importing different security tools and run them against the web/mail/dns servers you built. If you struggle, keep at it. By working through a problem you'll be forced to understand how things work at a lower level. Once you understand that you're on your way.
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Cool. Good advice. Yesterday I distabled the GUI on my router and had to ssh into it to restore it.

That was good learnings :)
 
I think you may be over-estimating yourself as an "intermediate script kiddie". I would have to say "beginner script kiddie" at best.
 
Wtf is this obsession with script kiddie, whitehat, blackhat. Get a C/C++ book and learn to program. Finding bugs and exploits will come with understanding the code.
 
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