Starting Out As An Ethical Hacker

[n00buigi]

Hello World...

Hi friends.
I used to do a lot in the console world back in the Wii days but from then haven't done much at all.

Next year I will be starting an Ethical Hacking degree and will be taking this year to get ready for it.
I am starting from scratch, although I knew things before I feel I'm lost now and have had a breakdown mentally a few times in they years and so feel I need to start again as a complete novice.

I'm quite a bit older than most here and understand how quickly technology has moved on and so was hoping for tips and help in starting from scratch.

I'll need to relearn coding and get up to date with software and current practice of things.

Anyway....if anyone can help point me to good free coding courses, youtube channels (that help) and suggestions of what software to be learning it would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me along my journey.
I'll be sure to bookmark this topic and keep y'all updated though time and of course re-edit this first post from time to time.

 

[FAST6191]

I would look at what this course entails. Programming is good and all but most "ethical hacking" things are see are more about using tools and techniques to infiltrate systems. This being you will likely end up benefiting far more from knowing what a rainbow table is

than what that particulars of handling an array is for a given language.
There are those hackers that do analyse things in depth. They tend not to come from ethical hacking courses as much as high end computer science (being computer science, physics, maths or electrical engineering feeders). This is changing slightly but if they allowed you in despite not being a computer programmer now I am dubious, even postgrad stuff I don't always expect to see. I am also somewhat dubious about most ethical hacking courses in general but they are getting better in that they are not all complete money pits and some will teach you something useful. That said most firms hiring people will probably still prefer to get people in off the street and train them up themselves in the use of john the ripper, metasploit, kali linux and whatever else rather than having to also get people to unlearn whatever some "professor" used in industry 6 years ago or has more of an academic understanding of than actively used in anger as part of a red team.


As you asked though
this playlist does well as an introduction to computer programming concepts, right from lower hardware levels to higher level stuff.
and
http://programming-motherfucker.com/

this playlist is a bit less coherent but has loads of topics that might be nice to have on lock and is a bit gentler than the lecture series linked above.

I do also like hacker conference talks. Defcon, C3, black hat and many more all have videos online. You can have your particular interests but anything and everything will hopefully pop for you there.
Two of my particular favourites





"and current practice of things"
Computers have not really changed in a while at this point, or there is a reason some might still be plausibly running core2duo era stuff if they only care about web browsing and office type tasks. Not to mention on the hacking front then the humble post it on the monitor, or walk in with a clipboard and go from there, is still a thing.
https://xkcd.com/627/ is as relevant today as it ever was.
You would probably do better to learn a bit about tablets and phones -- I often meet people these days for whom the phone/tablet is the primary computing platform, and if they have a PC (not all will which is a bit of a shocker to me) it is a dusty old laptop they might not have powered in many months, and mostly only use it to store photos and videos because some genius decided that phones and tablets no longer needed SD cards and that is now a feature you actively have to look for.