Do You Need to Know Programming to Be A Hacker?

Key Takeaways

what's up YouTube TCM here back with another video and today we're going to be talking about a topic that I get asked about all the time which is do I need to know programming in order to be a hacker and we're going to dive into this topic today I'm going to answer the question and we'll get to the bottom of this but first as always if you like the Channel please do hit the like button subscribe comment down below let me know what other video topics and questions you have I'm happy to answer them and with that said let's take a quick ad from our sponsor and we're going to jump right into this [Music] video man why does it always feel like I'm playing catchup with security are you having trouble with your code again yeah I can't seem to keep up with all the vulnerabilities I can write all this code but fixing it man it's like running a marathon with a weight strap to my ankle man I used to feel the same way until I started using sneak but it does all the heavy lifting for you let me show you so first things first you got to go to sneak /the cyber mentor and then you just scroll down right here and you can get started with GitHub Google or even bitbucket Azure ID Docker ID and so much more once you signed up you can come in here and add a project I'm going to select a project from GitHub and once your Project's imported sneak finds your vulnerabilities and you can fix them with just a click watch this I come into here I can open a fix PR or a pull request and sneak opens fixed PR so you can merge and move on plus it does it all from your existing tool tools IDE CLI repos pipelines Docker Hub and more and look how easy that was to just do a pull request with these issues in hand it's amazingly fast so what are you waiting for come check out sneak and find out if there's any vulnerabilities within your project it's free and you can sign up using my Link at sneak thee cyber Mentor okay so do you need to know programming in order to be a hacker the answer in short is no you could stop right here if you wanted to just completely cut out the video and just say he said no we're good in reality there's a lot of more of it depends okay baby Heath baby hacker Heath Used to Know zero programming when I first got into hacking I know very very little now you need to know how to be able to actually read programming and that is very very important let's start there because you are going to go in and often you'll be going to things like GitHub and finding repositories finding code that's out there and you're going to download this and potentially run this against a vulnerable machine and if you're being a pentester or a hacker you're likely running this against a client or somebody that's giv you permission to hack against them the one thing that you do not want to do is download and run code from the internet that you do not know what it does so you need to be able to understand what the code does you need to be able to understand the reputation of the the code and make sure that it's not going to hurt the client or hurt the system or any of that so step one to being a hacker is not necessarily hey I need to know how to code I don't need to be a developer but I definitely need to understand some code or it could be very dangerous and I can also become negligent and get myself in trouble or my company in trouble and you don't want to do that now when it comes to code people ask hey what should I learn first python is a great first language so much so that there are colleges out there switching to python as the 101 used to be Java nowadays a lot of colleges are switching to python as the fundamental first language to learn it's super easy to pick up it's very easy to read it does get difficult as it scales but for beginners it's very very friendly and once you pick up python it's a lot easier to pick up other languages a second shout out goes to something like JavaScript learning web applications and web application development could be useful if you're going into web application hacking or you're looking into like bug bounties things like that but still I lean towards python as a first language now moving along will programming help you be a better hacker yes the better the programmer that you are the better hacker that you'll be in my opinion are there great hackers out there that don't know how to program of course but the ones that are really really top tier do know how to program they know how to develop and they have some experience there there because it helps them with a lot of things first and foremost it helps with automation which makes your life a lot easier you see this at the top tier with bug Bounty especially a lot of the top tier bug bounty hunters are automating a lot of their task why spend time on things that you could automate that gives you time to go look for other things and that really really helps so the less time that you're manually working on the keyboard the better off that you're going to be that does not mean that you're just going to run vulnerability scanners and call a day that's bad practice but we can program things to automate some of our Lives now I've shared a video before about automating password cracking this is just one small thing that I've automated I automate a lot of my tasks as a hacker because it allows me to free up time and do other things why again waste time when you can automate a lot of your process so what you should be doing is thinking about things that you're doing on a day-to- day and saying how can I make this better how can I improve this process why do the same task over and over and over when you could commit some time sure it might take you longer than it takes to do the initial task but in the long run it'll save you time so why not just put some time in and actually program and develop something that you can automate out and then you could free up time to do other things the power of programming is very very important so don't shy away from it but on the flip side of that if you do not like programming and there's a lot of people that don't that's absolutely okay familiarize yourself with basic concepts go learn basic python you could do this for free we've got videos on our YouTube channel about learning python there's videos all over YouTube If you don't like us there are places like code academy that are free there are paid places like team Treehouse code with mosh and hey even TCM security has python courses there are plenty of places to learn programming so ultimately yeah you don't need to know programming to be a successful hacker I did it for many years without ever being a fullon developer as I grow and as I learn I learn that automating processes and learning to develop really helps me out it actually helps me understand the core of the business that we run here at TCM security because we have a development team as well and I actually do enjoy it at first I did it I kind of just built up that process but as you go and as you learn and you realize how easy your life can be with programming it makes it a lot better so find out if it's for you if it's not don't let that deter you from becoming a hacker you can absolutely be one you just need to familiarize yourself with code you don't have to be a developer by any means but if you can push further if it interests you by all means go out there and learn build things automate things make your life easier make work easier make everything a little bit better through the power of programming through the power of automation so that is it very quick video hopefully this answers the question if you need to know programming to be a hacker you don't and with that of course if you did enjoy the video please do drop a like hit that subscribe button we are pushing close to a million subscribers we get a little bit closer every day and I'm very very thankful for you and everybody that watches these videos and feel free to leave a comment to below let me know what it is you want to see in these videos upcoming either me or Alex or somebody from our team will put these videos together for you so let us know what you want to see other than that my name is Heath Adams AKA The Cyber mentor and I really do thank you for joining me for this video peace out