So how does hacking work anyway? | Hacker News Reader

So how does hacking work anyway?

20 pointsjoshmlewis7 comments

I am more of a web designer/front-end developer with a little experience in everything else. However I realize the potential of programming languages but I have never quite figured out or grasped how they go from writing a nice little web app to the drastic other side of breaching a web site, climbing into their databases, hacking their email, etc.. Can someone explain (and I'm sure someone on here can) how it all works? It seems to be a big secret but I want to know.

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It's not a big secret at all ;)

tptacek has a list of books on Amazon, linked to from his news.yc profile, which cover a wide range of application security topics (http://amzn.to/cthr46). I own The Art of Software Security Assessment and The Web Application Hacker's Handbook and I can vouch for them as quality resources, although I'm not sure how accessible they would be for a beginner.

In terms of a more practical introduction, Google Gruyere is an application deliberately built with security vulnerabilities for the purposes of learning (http://google-gruyere.appspot.com/). There are plenty of other projects along those lines: WebGoat is another good example.

What languages did you start on?

PHP was my very first language, which in hindsight was probably a good choice for a couple reasons:

1. It's used in a ton of web applications. It's slightly less popular than in the past due to the influx of frameworks like Rails and Django, but a lot of major web software (Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, MediaWiki, phpBB) still uses it.

2. People tend to write very insecure PHP code, especially when they fail to use a framework. Again, this is slightly less true now than it was in the past. However, it's very common to see bad practices like:

- SQL queries generated via string concatenation

- Output escaping done manually, on a per-element basis, rather than in an automatic, context-sensitive manner.

- File upload scripts that let you upload PHP files, or file download scripts that accept a filename but don't sanitize against directory traversal attacks.

OWASP (such as testing guide) would be a good place to start or simple books such as Innocent Code / Web hacking Exposed. Having prior experience in server-side coding will help massively.

Just like many other professions hacking/breaking is all about practising - you can safely hone your skills on these : http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20090406/hacking-without-all-the-ja...

You seem to confuse hacking with cracking (I blame the media for misinformation, not you). Hacking is more about creative solutions to problems not breaking into (unlawfully) computer systems and websites. Wikipedia offers a good (but incomplete) description of what a hacker does (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28hobbyist%29). Check this article by RMS (http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html).

While most popular penetration testing books only scratch the surface of the topic, they are still a good resource for beginners. "Gray Hat Hacking" is on it's 3rd edition and offers of good intro into many tools of the trade. http://amzn.com/0071742557

Metasploit includes a significant quantity of reference code: http://www.metasploit.com/

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