So I think I finally decided what I want to do with my life. I've always had a keen interest in computers, and though I don't understand them fully yet, I have a pretty good grasp on what gears do what, what software is good, and other computery things I've always heard of "hacking" and for the most part thought it was just a fourty year old Jabba the Hutt-esque man sitting in a basement trying to steal WoW accounts or something lol. But I've learned that the correct term for this is "Reverse Engineering" and after reading the Wikipedia page and watching an hour long video seminar about a guy that develops bots for WoW, I'm pretty sure this is what I want to do (Reverse Engineering.) I don't necessarily want to be hacking World of Warcraft accounts or making bots (though the latter wouldn't be too terrible) but the idea of essentially taking apart a piece of software to figure out how it works seems like a pretty fucking awesome thing to me. So I have questions! What sort of careers can one expect to be offered with this sort of expertise? What companies would want a reverse engineer, and what exactly would I be hacking/tearing apart? Is there a reverse engineering school or a certification/license I can acquire? Or is this a freelance skill I'll have to download tutorials for and master in my own time? I've only recently decided to do this, but I'm pretty damn sure its what I want to do! tl;dr - I want to become a reverse engineer (hacker), is there a school I can go to for this or classes I can take? Or is it a freelance skill I must learn in my own time? What sort of companies would hire me? Thanks!
You want to prepare for the CEH-Certified Ethical Hacker Exam also the CISSP exam will prepare you with computer security fundamentals. there´s a lot of stuff you can download and learn yourself. you can go to a university get a computer systemes engineering degree, if you want structured learning. otherwise with the certifications that´s enough to get into the industry.
That is what i did. You are going to want to take the Comp-tia testing. I went to New Horizon Computer learning. I got my A+, Net+, MCSA, CEH, CCNA. took about a year. you should look into that.
Not that I have ever seen. 75% of the time it is from weak user security. ( dumb people who use weak passwords.) from there a user can have access to other accounts and then your just a couple clicks away from losing everything.
It's pretty hard to guess or brute force a password, Unless it's a basic dumb password that would be in a password list, Like banana.
If your wanting to like, use existing written code and change what it does, your going to want to learn how to program, and the many languages that things are programmed in. Bots that play games for you are made by programmers using different languages, the RS bot that I have used is written in Java. Taking apart the code of different games and making cool things, like walking AC130 and shit like that for COD MW2, is just using the existing code in different ways. A computer hacker knows things about networking, I'm pretty sure. A+, CCNA certs have nothing to do with learning how to program, if that is what you're looking to do. I think most colleges have computer science majors and computer programming classes. You could probably do it completely online as well. A benefit of just learning how to program is that you will be able to both engineer your own shit and reverse engineer other peoples shit.
I figured any RS bot would be Java, since that's what RS is written in. I might just make bots and sell them too, idk. Once you know so many languages you can do just about anything. What I'd really like to learn is SQL, then I can use SQL injection to hack peoples passwords and shit and sell their accounts Lol, I wouldn't really do that though...maybe. haha
Just a heads up.. be great at math, logic, and creativity. There is no recipe for reverse engineering, and it takes very smart people to do these things well.. But start off by writing some programs, and see if you like this sort of thing.
You know, there are conferences built on the premise of ethical hacking and usually have a large number of competitions started by software developers/hardware manufacturers in the conference so they can find security holes in their products. The conferences I've heard of were giving prizes of up to(or the highest number I heard/remembered) $10,000 plus the device/software they successfully hacked into. As a side to a career, I could see that being incredibly fun travelling around and taking part in these conferences. I'm sure you could find a course or program that specializes in games and bots if thats what you're purely interested in for a career side. I don't think I can answer the career aspect any better than the posters above me so I would look into studying/taking those tests.
I mean you could, Or you could just make a Trojan horse, that would be alot better. And CCNA has nothing to do with programing. But i do know every weakness of most Cisco routers, bridges, servers, and alll that. Now i can make a program that does what I want it too. To make it simple for you, go and study C+, A+, and get some kind of networking too. try Net+