How to Become a Hacker or an Ethical Hacker?
One of the most common questions that, how to become a hacker or an ethical hacker the answer to this really depends on why you want to learn hacking is it because you’re just interested in it is it because you want to test the security of a system or secure a specific system or do you want to make a career out of it and in this article, I’m gonna try to answer this question and help you draw a path that will help you achieve your goal.
So, let’s break it down if you want to learn hacking just because you’re interested in it or because you want to test the security of a system or if you want to secure your own system and all of these cases you really don’t need to prove that you have the hacking skills.
So, you’re only interested in learning hacking as a skill just like any other skill you can go on google and search for how to hack or how to learn hacking, hacking websites and you’ll get a lot of useful resources this is actually how I learned and how I started I will include some useful websites in the article and all you have to do is literally just go through these websites find what’s useful for you and start learning.
The best thing about this option is that it’s completely free you don’t have to pay for anything.
If you don’t have time to go through all of the resources and through all of the information that you can find on
- Google and,
- YouTube and.
- other websites,
- and you just want a specific path or a curriculum,
that will take you from one stage to another or teach you a specific hacking field then you can go ahead and just go for an online hacking course there are a lot of hacking courses.
These days and a lot of them are actually very-very useful I teach a number of hacking courses myself and I will include links to them in article you don’t have to do my courses like I said do your own research see which is useful for you and just go with the ones that you think suit you best personally.
I actually didn’t learn from any courses I learned through the free method like I said I was literally just researching Google and other websites for the topics that I wanted to learn and I learned from that it’s just that I had a lot of free time on my hands.
So, I was able to just find what’s useful test it and learn from there what also helped me a lot is contributing back to these websites and to the communities that I learned hacking from, I noticed that making a video or a tutorial or a post about a topic that.
I just learned helped me understand that topic much more through literally just making that article or through the comments or through the king actions that you make after publishing that video or that post you never know you might even get a job out of it now the trickier part is if you actually trying to make a career out of hacking.
So, if you want to get a job as an ethical hacker or as a cybersecurity expert, in this case, have it the skills is simply not enough although.
I know some of my students were able to get jobs simply by relying on the courses that I teach but in general online courses work great as an add-on to exist in experience or to an existent degree in IT at least or in cybersecurity.
So, if you want to work as an ethical hacker or a pentester and you don’t have any experience and you don’t have any IT related qualifications.
The first thing that you need to do obviously get the skills second you need to build a name for yourself and gain some experience.
Now there are a number of ways to do this first of all you can go for certifications such as CEH and OSCP you can get involved in bug bounty programs these are programs where you can go and hack into websites with permission of the system owners and if you manage to find bugs.
You’ll actually get paid and at the same time you’re going to get experience and you’ll get noticed you can also again experience and get noticed by getting involved and capture-the-flag competitions.
And by simply writing articles and posts and videos like I said by contributing back to ethical hacking communities once you build enough experience.
You can actually go ahead and start freelancing now there are a lot of freelancing websites that you can find online you can look for people looking for pen tests or looking for ethical hackers and start doing some work from there and then again build up a profile, build up experience which you can use on your CV.
And you can use to go and get better jobs now if you’re already working in IT or have an IT related experience or degree then you might be able to get your foot in the door without having to do too much all you need is obviously the skill and you can get them like.
I said using the free sources or online courses and then from there you can literally go ahead and start applying for jobs you can make your CV stronger by again getting certifications such as OSCP and CEH.
Again getting yourself known by getting involved in bug bounty programs and CTFs and all the other tips that I said previously.
If you’re still in school but you know that this is what you want to do you want to work as an ethical hacker then again get the skills like I explained earlier get experience and get noticed again using the same methods and then go to an IT-related course.
You don’t have to do a cybersecurity course this is actually what I did I did a computer science course but as I was doing it.
I kept learning about ethical hacking I kept contributing to the communities I kept working on my profile to get experience and to get myself noticed and by the time I graduated I got a lot of job offers in cybersecurity.
Last but not least let’s say you’re already in college and already study in an IT-related course like I said get the skills from free online sources or online courses work on your name work on your experience get yourself noticed again using all the tips that I said earlier.
Doing bug bounties do in CTFs contributing and doing certifications and by the time you graduate.
This is very important you’re extra lucky because you can apply for graduate positions in graduate positions the employers don’t expect you to be very skilled.
Therefore you’ll get trained you’ll get paid you’ll get experience and some of them will even pay for you to go and do other certifications.
And learn more about cybersecurity and ethical hacking now I hope I covered all possible scenarios.
If, I missed anything please let me know in the comments I’m sure there are other ways to get into the industry this is just what I can think of it really depends on how bad you want it and how much time and effort you want to put into it.
Resources: 1. Free online sources to learn hacking:
— https://packetstormsecurity.com
— https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com
2. Paid online / offline courses: — The complete ethical hacking courses
