Learning Offensive Security Skills

Some great info from Raphael Mudge … How to Milk a Comp Sci Education for Offensive Security Skills:

Recently, a poster on reddit asked how to get into offensive security as a student studying Computer Science. Before the post was removed, the poster expressed an interest in penetration testing or reverse engineering.

I studied Computer Science at different schools (BSc/MSc/Whateverz). This is timely as a new semester is about to begin and students still have an opportunity to change their schedules if needed. 

Offensive security is multi-disciplinary and people come into it with different backgrounds. Any background you master will equip you to become a useful contributor. Studying Computer Science (or even having a degree in the first place) are not the only path into this niche of security.

If you want to milk your Computer Science education for offensive security skills, here are my tips.

...

You should learn to program in a systems language, a managed language, and a scripting language. Learn at least one computer architecture really well too.

...

Python and Ruby are the preferred scripting languages in the security community. I lean towards emphasizing Python over Ruby. There are a lot of great libraries and books [1, 2] on doing security stuff with Python.

If you want to tinker with the Metasploit Framework, your best bet is Ruby. Ultimately–pick a project and use that as an excuse to master a language or tool. This is how you will acquire any skill you want (during and after college).

...

Take an operating systems course and the advanced OS course if you can. Usually these courses require you to work in a kernel and do a lot of C programming. Knowing how to work in a kernel will make you a better programmer and teach you to manipulate a system at the lowest levels if you need to.

After a good first course in operating systems, you will know how to program user-level programs, understand which services the OS provides you, and ideally you will have modified or extended a kernel in a simple way.

Take a compiler construction course to follow up with an architecture course. By the time you get through architecture and compiler construction, you will know assembly language for a specific architecture and how to use a debugger really well.

...

Active Directory administration, configuring Cisco routers and firewalls, using hacking tools, and other practical system administration skills are not usually covered in a CS curriculum. Be ready for this. If this is what you want, there are some good programs on Systems Administration and you may want to consider a switch.

...

If you get through the foundational material and find yourself hungry for more, try to arrange an independent study. I like independent study. It’s a chance for you to work on your own and produce something to prove you’ve acquired a skill or mastered a process. If your independent study produces open source or a useful paper, you may find the independent study boosts your career more than an academic transcript ever will.

...

Since you’re interested in offensive security, here are my two suggestions:

NYU Poly offers an Application Security and Vulnerability Analysis course. All of the lectures, homework, and project materials are available on the website. If you want to learn how to find vulnerabilities and write exploits, you could work through this course at an accelerated pace and spend the rest of the semester on a final project.

Syracuse University publishes the Instruction Laboratories for Security Education (SEED). This collection contains guided labs to explore software, web application, and network protocol vulnerabilities.

SEED also has open-ended implementation labs to add security features to the Minix and Linux kernels. If you ever wanted to write a VPN, develop your own firewall, or try a new security concept–these labs are a great start and any one of them could seed an independent study project. These labs were designed to provide a challenging end of course project. Two of these would make a very interesting semester of independent study.

Photo by sfslim - http://flic.kr/p/9xwiyQ