Ethical hacking refers to offensive testing of computer systems in order to find out security-related loopholes. These loopholes are called security vulnerabilities. It has been a very popular career choice for students of all backgrounds(non-CS students can also learn it easily and be equally good as CS students, or even better than them).
ince ethical hacking is about compromising the systems, it assumes familiarity with how those systems actually work. During your process of hacking(ethically), you will come across networks, networking devices, networking protocols, websites, web technologies, content delivery mechanisms, and many more components of online infrastructures. Being comfortable with what these components do and how they work together is essential. Knowledge of the markup language of the web (HTML) a scripting language(JavaScript) a data transfer language(XML or JSON), components of a web-based system, knowledge of computer networks and TCP/IP suite, knowledge of basic programming in C/C++/Java/Python is good enough to get you started.
You can learn ethical hacking effectively by following this two-step process. The first step would be to learn about concepts and to understand them well. On the internet, the resources for learning are available in abundance. We recommend:
Recommended Books
1. Hacking for Dummies: The “for dummies” series of Wiley focuses on publishing beginner-friendly books on various topics. This book introduces the user to ethical hacking through concepts and tools. It is very useful for people who want to start learning ethical hacking but are not very comfortable with programming. This should however be understood that being an elite hacker is almost impossible without learning to program.
2. CEHv10 Study Guide by SYBEX: This book is aimed to aid the preparation of CEH(Certified Ethical Hacker), a popular certification course in ethical hacking. It explains the ethical hacking methodology and the phases of it. Each phase of ethical hacking is well explained with details of the concepts and practice on the tools.
3. Hacking, The Art of Exploitation :This book has been very popular in the community of white hat hackers for a long time. Probably because of the content it covers and the depth it goes into. The good thing about this book is that even if you are a novice with absolutely no knowledge about programming and networks, you can still benefit immensely. The book covers Basic Programming in C, Scripting with Bash, basics of memory management in computers, filesystems, overflow based vulnerabilities and their exploitation, basic networking, attacks on networks, writing shell-code, and cryptology.
