How I Got Into Hacking

Before I started hacking, I was and still am a programmer. But one thing I noticed when I was learning how to hack was that a lot of my coding knowledge actually applied to hacking. When I first started teaching myself how to program I was into hacking as well, but I thought that was too advanced for me so I ended up pursuing coding instead.

The first time I was introduced to hacking was from a friend I met in middle school. I met him in gym class and we became friends later. I would go to his house sometimes and he would show me these cool things he did on his computer. I can’t remember everything he did but one of the things he showed me was this modern warfare account on his Xbox with all of these crazy mods on it. As the years went by he started to hack other things like Pokemon GO accounts and I’m sure he did other stuff but those were one of the first things I saw.

I used to think hacking was this complex, abstract concept that only smart people could do. But when I saw him do all of this as an 8th grader, I started to realize that it’s possible. Fast forward almost six years and I have captured Wifi passwords, hacked Linux and Windows computers, and found passwords and usernames from websites and computers. I learned how to do this all with in a span of one to two months and what I learned from all this is that your brain has an interesting way of making things seem harder than they really are. If I had not met my friend or tried out hacking for myself I never would have thought that it could be something I could realistically pursue.

What I recommend to anyone who is reading this and is curious about hacking is to see if there are any clubs or meetups either at your school or at the local library. Joining clubs and groups of hacking communities is a good way to accelerate your learning and meet some pretty cool people. In August of 2020 I decided to join a Cyber Security club at my college and it was one of the best things I chose to do on my own. I met so many experienced people who were into hacking and all of my founding knowledge stems from those people I met in the club. We even competed in a couple hacking tournaments with other schools in the U.S., it was a lot of fun.

Competitions are another way to accelerate your learning too. I’ve only managed to attend two competitions due to full time work and school but it has been a blast so far. I learned so much during those competitions that I cannot recommend it enough. Competitions also do a really good job at instilling what you are already know and helps sharpen your skills.

My biggest take away is that if you are curious about hacking and want to try it out I definitely recommend you take a look at some places that can get you started. For me, TryHackMe has helped a lot in my learning because it’s very beginner friendly but also allows you to advance to harder and harder subjects. The biggest take away about this site is that it allows you to actually practice what you know by letting you setup one of their target machines and exploit it, and the best part is that it’s totally free.

Anyway, that’ll be it for this blog. If you like these sort of things let me know by hitting the like button.