A while back I saw @twitter user asked the following question,
I have a friend who is looking into ethical hacking. She is also broke college student so do you know of any free for affordable resources she can use?
Ethical hackers are knowledgeable and use their knowledge to help to defend against criminals, pranksters, and nation attackers. They use interpreting network protocols, solid background with white software, designing the network and so on. But beyond that, they need some resources which helps them to stay on top and fight attackers, and learn different methods to build a network which is like a peer of mind.
They work as a team, even the best of us can’t do it alone. Internet criminals are the most dangerous of all, they use to attack systems, networks without consent and ethical hackers must practice these to enhance their skills to safe the environment and nation from these internet criminals. Setting up a system in-home or shared lab environment with vulnerable networks, servers and workstations. But at a time the cost of maintenance is a bit expensive of such labs which can be expensive and time-consuming. Fortunately, ethical hackers have a plethora of resources available to aspiring their ethical hacker’s team.
There is some skill set that you can learn which will help you to become a successful ethical hacker.
CTFS: Capture the flag exercise can be self-paced, downloadable vulnerable environments or competitive online event in which you are expected to attack or defend the vulnerable systems. Some are made to frustrate you, which is probably not what you want to be at that time. Others are great for beginners some of them are going to build enough confidence while stretching your skills a bit. Such as here are some of them I listed below,
Plaid CTF: It’s a great start towards your ethical hacking career, you can learn this skill in your spare time. Go do it!!
Hack.LU CTF: It’s a good mix of fun and challenging. The old ones are also available on Google, make sure that you check out them.
CSAW: This round has only playable online which has the only qualification, but it definitely worth your time for a diverse set of challenges.
CCDC: College students defend a realistic enterprise network from skilled hackers or attackers. That'll be the only time in your life when you’ll be able to talk to someone who spent last whole week hacking your network to understand what you should have done better, and if you place, you can expect to get competitive job offers from different places of the world.
Books
Personally, I love to read the books that give you hand on some examples and labs, since that’s my learning style. I also tend to focus on Windows-based attacks, since that’s where my interest lies. If you are looking for these Ethical hacking books, make sure that you check,
your library near your home or you can find it on somewhere on the internet because it’s the biggest place to learn anything.
Some of my favourite books are
1- Metasploit- The penetration Tester’s guide
2- Rootkits: Subverting the Window’s Kernel
3- Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering
4- Practical Malware Analysis
5- Gray Hat Python
6- Bullet proof SSL and TSL
Museum Hack The Ethical Hacking Guides Ethical hacking Online Course
