(01-14-2016, 10:25 PM)insidious15 Wrote: Look around for CTFS. Even if you're too old/young for them, sign up anyway and try to do many of the problems. If you don't know something no matter how small, research it. Research, research, research, Google, more research. Keep doing.
That probably won't give you a solid foundation, but depending on the CTF you do and how well it was made, it can show you different areas of that hacking world.

Many CTF's require some prior experience (like coding knowledge) but if you already have that, many lead you from a progression of Very Easy ---> Difficult.

IMO that's a good way to get experience, and the competition part of it is fun, especially if you can get some other people/friends in on it.

There are also many completed CTFs which have problems on them you can still complete, those are good too.

I also love wargames. Smashthestack/overthewire have a bunch of fun stuff you can do which can give you something to do.

Hackthissite.com and other such sites are good

I recommend finding a way to get a good base, but those are somethings you can do to learn hacking.

Those are some pretty innocent white hat ways to gain experience. If you want blackhat, I s'pose you can go around looking for vulns in shit, but that's just a tad bit difficult to do for a beginner.

Before you do any of this, it's important to develop a base, however.
You probably want to know some important languages at least on a basic level. C, PHP, SQL, Python, Java are all good to know

Networking skills. Know how these things work, they help alot.
DHCP
NAT
Subnetting
IPv4
IPv6
Public v Private IP
DNS
Routers and switches
VLANs
OSI model
MAC addressing
ARP
Those are often-exploited technologies. The more you know about how they work, the better you will be (at least in my book).

Linux Skills. This Wargame http://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ is great for learning some linux basics, and it's made for absolute beginners.
That's not sufficient though. Get linux, play around with it. Use it.
Fuck Windows.
Want to learn linux? Uninstall windows, get rid of it, and use Linux as your daily driver. Start out with something simple, like Ubuntu or Linux Mint, and work your way down to more complex stuff like Archlinux and maybe even Gentoo. Force yourself to use a terminal by installing a window manager (like Awesome, i3, xmonad) which will also allow you to delve into those respective programming languages (Awesome --> Lua xmonad --> haskell. there's also a python version but i can't remember it rn)

Wireshark/TCP Dump, learn it

Virtualization, know it

Learn security/hacking concepts (books are good for this)

Scripting (PERL/Bash etc.)


It's hard to get any experience unless you have some type of base beforehand.
There is far too many things to know in the hacking world to put it in one post. Their are entire books dedicated to one small aspect of hacking. The Real Slim Shady's answer was very good, and i also recommend his advice. Following the advice in my post will only show you how to do specific things, and not lead to an over-arching and in-depth knowledge of a topic.