Why you can't teach someone how to hack

Stephen Akiki

1/16/2009

What does it mean to be a hacker? What does a hacker do? If you were an average Joe, you might say a hacker is someone who breaks into computer systems through some sort of computer wizardry involving lots of quick typing and GUIs. Doesn�t seem so hard, especially considering that Hollywood portrays hackers managing to bypass the even most advanced firewalls with a couple of grunts and close-up camera shots. So when they see you, the computer guy, typing away at your computer, they ask the seemingly innocent question of, "can you teach me to hack?"

What do you say to that? You can say no, but if it�s a friend, it might not come off to well. If you say yes, you end up fumbling with explaining why things work and eventually just give up by showing them some obscure command prompt trick. As a result, you have several friends who now consider typing "tree" in the root directory of a drive in a DOS box hacking.

The problem is that you can�t teach someone how to hack. Why? Because hacking is not one skill but a multitude of skills. The world "hacking" is an umbrella for all the different fields that it entails. It means that someone is able to use various individual pieces of knowledge and combine them to find a solution. There is no "generic" version of this process.

But let�s say the hacker-to-be is more tech savvy and asks something specific like, "can you teach me to hack Windows?" or "I want to break into cnn.com" (still vague, but go with it). Assuming you had the skills to do so, you could show them an exploit or two, but does that make them a hacker?

To put it bluntly: it doesn�t. It makes a script kiddie sure, but a hacker it does not. Hacking does not mean being able to execute a script, or knowing an exploit. Hacking means knowing the inner workings of something so well that you are able to know all the little secrets that allow you to make it do what you want. To see a hacker in action is like seeing a local drive around town when there is a big event. They know all the shortcuts, where the traffic jams are going to be, where the police usually hang out, etc. and they use that knowledge to help them in their goal.

Now some of you out there already know this. And you might be ready to point out that this is not special to hacking. For instance, everybody knows that you can ask someone how to play football. And if they�re nice they will indeed show you how to play, but what they can�t show you is how to be play great football. This argument can be spanned out across multiple professions, but the theme stays the same: you can show someone the basics, but you can�t show them how to be great.

But it is most apparent in hacking because hacking is a mindset. You can�t teach someone how to think. You can�t teach someone to reason, or to be logical. You can only show them the tools that will allow them to be enlightened. Perhaps it is said best by the mentor of one of the most famous hackers of them all: