Hey, IM LOST

[iTpHo3NiX]

I would suggest getting familiar with Ubuntu which is a little more user friendly than Backtrack at first.  To use some of the tools in BT you have to know your way around linux pretty well.  You can get most of the hacking tools installed on Ubuntu too.

BackTrack 5 (Unreleased at this time) is actually built off of Ubuntu

BackTrack 5 will be based on Ubuntu Lucid (10.04 LTS), and will (finally) support both 32 bit and 64 bit architectures. We will be officially supporting KDE 4, Gnome and Fluxbox while providing users streamlined ISO downloads of each Desktop Environment (DE). Tool integration from our repositories will be seamless with all our supported DE’s, including the specific DE menu structure.

Source:
http://www.backtrack-linux.org/backtrack/backtrack-5-release-tool-suggestions/

Not sure if BT4 is built off of slax or ubuntu for sure.

[pl4f0rd]

BackTrack 5 (Unreleased at this time) is actually built off of Ubuntu

Source:
http://www.backtrack-linux.org/backtrack/backtrack-5-release-tool-suggestions/

Not sure if BT4 is built off of slax or ubuntu for sure.

Yeah very true, I was just thinking back to the time when I was a newbie I could never get to grips with  backtrack for some reason, I tried to immerse my self in it daily but it's just not built to be an everyday system, even BT R2 still doesn't feel finished if you know what I mean  Let's hope BT 5 is just like Ubuntu as that's a pretty easy to use and stable OS.

My main point really is it's better to immerse yourself daily in what you want to learn, with Ubtuntu you can do this, for example your network/wireless will show up automatically in BT it doesn't and could confuse the beginner.

Also, the BT forums are not very friendly if you require help.

[iHackiDevices]

I am also in the same boat. I am new to just about everything. Same grade level, and have an interest in hacking. From what I have read and taken from my readings Is that to be a hacker you should understand how the programs are written and how they work, in able to exploit them. I have began to read multiple books that explain programming, but from an advanced point of view even though it has said "beginner" right in the title. So, I decided to step down a notch and start completely from the beginning and read a book on Linux.. From things I have read online Linux is an operating system in which many people write their programs and then compile them, and is the closest operating system to the freedom and heart of hacking. I figure that it will get me familiar with some of the tools used by hackers. My interest in hacking started when I came upon the first iPhone jailbreak. I loved everything in it and what it could do. I thought to myself how far this could go. I then got into torrents and just figuring out ways to get around things. I used many different programs. But that's all I could use, programs. I began to wonder to myself HOW. How all of this was done. So mainly, my question is how do people such as Comex, geohot, muscle nerd and people like that do it with iOS jail breaking? What is it that they actually exploit in the software and how? Also, how do I build steps to get to even half of what they can do? Am I starting in the right place? What are the steps to get there? And Things like that.

Thank you.
Also, as you can see it is my first post , so please be easy on the criticism.   

[ande]

I am also in the same boat. I am new to just about everything. Same grade level, and have an interest in hacking. From what I have read and taken from my readings Is that to be a hacker you should understand how the programs are written and how they work, in able to exploit them. I have began to read multiple books that explain programming, but from an advanced point of view even though it has said "beginner" right in the title. So, I decided to step down a notch and start completely from the beginning and read a book on Linux.. From things I have read online Linux is an operating system in which many people write their programs and then compile them, and is the closest operating system to the freedom and heart of hacking. I figure that it will get me familiar with some of the tools used by hackers. My interest in hacking started when I came upon the first iPhone jailbreak. I loved everything in it and what it could do. I thought to myself how far this could go. I then got into torrents and just figuring out ways to get around things. I used many different programs. But that's all I could use, programs. I began to wonder to myself HOW. How all of this was done. So mainly, my question is how do people such as Comex, geohot, muscle nerd and people like that do it with iOS jail breaking? What is it that they actually exploit in the software and how? Also, how do I build steps to get to even half of what they can do? Am I starting in the right place? What are the steps to get there? And Things like that.

Thank you.
Also, as you can see it is my first post , so please be easy on the criticism.   

May I suggest you go even lower down and learn the very fundamentals of bits and bytes part of a computer, then learn a highlevel language like C/++, then go on to Assembly. Once you got some experience with programming and computer logic you can start doing some development for iOS if you want to know how to exploit it. It might sound a bit overkill, but just take it step by step. Programming really is the one thing everyone in this field needs to learn, with it so many other answers are answered.

[I_Learning_I]

C++ Highlevel?
C/C++ was indeed considered high level but some years ago, right now it's considered low-level due to the possibility of editing memory directly.

High level would be Java with a good syntax, lots of stack, buffer protections and other stuff, like VB.

Anyways for those starting I hope you find what you're looking for.
As for WebApp I must say, it will get kinda straight after some reading, as you'll find out most of vulnerabilities are just due to user input and a poor validation, which means that from there you'll only need to know how to code in the vulnerable language to exploit it.

iHackiDevices I wish you luck, you just know your way around C/C++, Assembly, look into reverse engineering and should also check Overfows, heap, stack, buffer.
After all that you just have to defeat the protections such as ALSR, DEP which protect systems from overflowing.
I must say, you're going into the hardest, but also the biggest reward, so good luck

[iHackiDevices]

Hahaha thank you both very much. I realize it is no easy task. And yeah I have started to read c books before. Any recommendations on any books? Also I have realized you can learn a lot from forums so I try to enroll myself in as many of these as I can. I downloaded hacking the art of exploitation version 2 on my iPad and also the C programming language by Ritchie and Kernighan. Thanks again for the help and any other information will be very much appreciated.

[iTpHo3NiX]

geohot just likes taking credit for other peoples work. He can do some stuff, but meh. I do not like geohot. But anyways lose the iCrap and get a real phone like ANY Android out on the market and PROFIT xD