Some Resource I Wish I Had When I Was a Total Big Ass Noob

fyi im a smaller ■■■ noob now.

file system stuff, which actually can be guessed after seeing other people glossing over it in writeups a couple times, especially if you think from a designer’s point of view, but if you for some reason don’t want to guessing about it yourself or need something to confirm that your guess is right: Advanced UNIX Programming By Marc J. Rochkind, go to its google book page, click preview and navigate to title 1.1.5. Permissions (which is under 1. Fundamental Concepts then 1.1. A Whirlwind Tour of UNIX and Linux just for the context) and voila, only 3 tiny pages, can literally fit in one screen tiny, as an intro pretty refreshing, as confirmation really rewarding.
(i bumped into this book because i asked a person what the pattern in their avatar mean as i saw a lot of similar ones in that day, so it turned out to be hacker emblem, the website proposing it also contain a funny toned section Speak, O Guru: How can I become a Unix Wizard?, and several books are listed. in hindsight, i should have landed in such material way earlier if i searched what inode mean aftering once seeing it in a dd command output if i remembered correctly, but back then i was in a phase where i absolutely was disgusted by computer related terminologies, thinking “ugh im gonna be told that it is a thing, you know, has some other things in it, just like everything else”.)

c stuff, i raged through Learn C Programming pages in website Programiz one day because i can not handle even the simplest pwn challenge for i can’t read the c code of it, im really glad there’s pwn chall to solve, as i can’t find a thing that i want to build, lots of people do and they learn by building, quite happily it seems (they complain having pain in the ■■■ but they are actually happy most of the time, it’s a weird showing off thing i guess).

assembly stuff, imo the arch in the first article you go through doesn’t even have to match the arch you are trying to learn, as they are kinda similar and in the end at least for me, pick a writer whose narrative style you like matters more for easing into this scary looking topic. i personally like Tonc: Whirlwind Tour of ARM Assembly, a lot, judging from the scroll bar the article is long but it really flows so not painful at all. my greatest regret is postpone playing with asm myself and settle at reading other people playing with it and get super confused for a long time.

hardware stuff, tbh i was having trouble reading asm related stuff still, because they always say things like “then you jump to it”, and i would go “im going nowhere im poking at keyboard”, then i came up with weird analogy involving magic stairs with missing steps in harry potter movies, which now that i look at it again, is total horse ■■■■. it bothers me a bit who the ■■■■ is handling those addresses and stuff that i push onto the stack, where the ■■■■ is this stack and registers etc. Safe VSP - Linus Åkesson is the first article i read with hardware involved, not a tutorial but it hit me with fact that this computer thing is largely wires, not that i used to imagine there are sparkling little forms chilling in the box, but reading a very specific bug described in very concise language make me way more comfortable than before. i then went to wikichip and picked one chip (i think it’s zen2) and searched every term in that page, felt sligtly better but still nothing clicks. saw some youtube videos on the manufacturing (SiliconLite) and physical structure (those on Branch Education) of chips, they are way more 3d than i thought, scenes where structures squatting over each other kinda make me don’t want to look at them any more, i swear there are moments i saw some fancy multi-floor dock designs in it. i forgot for how long i give up searching for related resources: i got too desperate and start watching conference talk with really advanced names, something if for serious level up purpose i should not even bother watch because they are way ahead of me, and i find this talk Reading Silicon: How to Reverse Engineer Integrated Circuits mentioned noob info that i need: gates, yeee.

as i look back i feel really stupid as i spent so much time (3 months disappeared from the platform not doing any boxes) chasing for what no shits and i suspect all these can be squeezed in a week of courses. time really flies. so maybe this can help other noobs and it will be 3 minutes instead of 3 months. (i have no idea who need to see this but.)

bonus stuff, Human Resource Machine is a cute little game if you’re into it, not something i discovered during these 3 months, but it is in these 3 months that i realize by finding blocks of a program where they don’t rely on each other and roatating them with aid of jump and swapping them around, im doing some compiler optimization work kinda.

Thank you for the share and insights @bitn4b :slight_smile:

@acidbat aye bud truely long time no see! i think i drifted away for too long i forgot those pentest stuff and it’s gonna take some time to pick them up again *tears* might need your help

@bitn4b no worries mate :slight_smile:
I’m starting to pick up some pace again after a long break and yes long time no see (virtually :D)