Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is one of my favourite books. Although to be honest I’ve never actually read it. I have had it read to me, three times in fact, by Wil Wheaton. In my opinion it is absolutely the best way to consume this book. Go try it. Get the audio book and sit back and revel in both the future and the 1980s at the same time. You’ll thank me later.
That’s not the point of this post however. No, I wanted to compare the aforementioned experience to hacking, well ethical hacking obviously. You see, when learning the craft you often spend time exploring virtual rabbit holes getting side-tracked with learning fun tools and techniques. Kind of like Parcival on his egg hunt. Whether he’s learning the lines to War Games or mastering ancient arcade games.
With hacking you can spend days learning a new tool or figuring out how a protocol works. Under normal circumstances that may sound as dull as dishwater, but as part of a gamified hacking challenge it can be a lot of fun. Lots of fun in fact. Especially if it gets you a foothold on a box, or even privilege escalation to root!
Sign up to an ethical hacking platform like Hack The Box or Try Hack Me and you’ll see what I mean. It suddenly becomes fun to learn as you earn points and level up. Plus you start to fill your brain with useful skills and knowledge during the process. Go give it a try. Gamified ethical hacking can be a lot of fun.
Ready player one?