The Pentester BluePrint

2Prerequisite Skills

One of the main reasons for writing this book is to share our experience and opinions on what it takes to become a pentester. The concept of this book evolved from an ethical hacking class lecture, to a conference presentation, and now to a book. One topic that was missing at those conferences, and in the available books, was how to become a pentester. You can find lots of books and conference presentations on pentesting, but not on what exactly is required to prepare for a career as a pentester.

Before you start learning how to hack, which is a major piece of the puzzle (though certainly not the only requirement), other prerequisites are required before you start down the path to becoming a pentester. Actually, the starting point is going to be different from person to person. If you are working in information technology (IT), software development, or information security, your prerequisites will vary.

To assess the security of a target and to hack into it, you will need to understand the technology and the security. Deep knowledge of your target is required to be successful at penetrating the target. You don't have to know everything about every technology, but a good understanding is required. If you get command-line access to a Windows or Linux server and you don't know the commands for those operating systems, it is going to limit your success, or at least slow you down.

Skills Required for Learning Pentesting

A lot of different technologies are ...