Which programming languages are the most useful for an aspiring hacker/IT security professional?
A hacker should know two or more programming languages so in
this post I am explaining about which programming language a hacker should
learn for hacking and top six most helpful websites to learn programming
languages easily.
Having the prior knowledge of programming is something which will separate you from all the other script kiddies (wanna be hackers) and other tool lovers out there. Lots of times during penetration tests you come across a point where you need to write or build your own custom scripts and programs, and this is where the knowledge of programming comes handy. The other, and by the far the most important, advantage of programming is that you will be able to understand exploit codes and even learn to write them too. Even though there are programs which have made the process of exploit writing much simpler, you still need to have a solid grasp of programming languages in order to know how the exploits work.
Web Hacking
Now if you are interested in web hacking subject, subject then I would recommend you to learn the following languages:
1. HTML – Start with HTML if you don’t know it.
2. JavaScript – Next learn JavaScript, which will help you understanding the fundamentals of cross-site scripting which will be explained later in this book.
3. SQL Databases – You should learn to work with databases, which will help you to understand the fundamentals of SQL injection attacks which will be also explained later in this book when we come to the web application hacking chapter.
4. PHP – Learning PHP should be your one of your first priorities if you want to understand the mechanisms behind the web hacking attacks. I would recommend you to learn it as soon as possible.
Recommended Sources:
Exploit Writing
Exploit writing is a very difficult segment in hacking as it requires pure programming knowledge, which is why I will not recommend you to start with exploit writing. Exploits are/can be coded in almost any programming language e.g C/C++, Python, Perl, etc., but more than 50% of the exploits you will find on the web will be coded in C/C++ languages because they were present before any one of other languages. Languages such as C and C++ are considered as programming languages where as languages such as Ruby, Perl and Python are considered more as scripting languages.
I would recommend you to start with C languages and then to C++, C/C++ have lots of similarities, so if you could get a good grasp on any one of them you can learn the other one easily.
Ruby
Talking about scripting languages, I would recommend you to start with Ruby, Ruby is one of my most favorite programming languages as it’s purely object-oriented which means that everything you work on is an object. Ruby is really useful when it comes to exploit writing, and Ruby is used for coding meterpreter scripts and what could be more better that the Metasploit framework itself was coded in the Ruby language.
Python
Python is also a very useful programming language, and it can also be used for exploit writing. If you go for Python first then make sure that you learn Python socket programming as it will help you a lot in the exploit creation process.
Perl
Talking about Perl, it’s also used widely for exploit writing. You will find lots of exploits out there written in Perl, but the problem is that Perl is really difficult compared to other languages such as Ruby and Python, so I would recommend you to learn it at the very end.
Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering is an act of tampering software, applications to make them work out way. If you are interested in reverse engineering and software cracking stuffs then you would surely need to learn assembly language.
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