There are a number of new hackers joining the community on a regular basis and this raises the question of "How do I get started and what are some good resources?" and we hope to help with those questions using this repository. As a hacker, there a ton of techniques, terminologies, and topics you need to familiarize yourself with to understand how an application works. Cody Brocious (@daeken) and I put these resources together in order to help new hackers with resources to learn the basics of Web Application Security.
We understand that there are more resources other than the ones we have listed and we hope to cover more resources in the near future!
In order to be able to learn what and how an application works, you need to be able to understand how you are communicating with it. This section is dedicated to all the resources to understand the HTTP basics.
- All in one resource: https://www.hacker101.com/sessions/web_in_depth HTTP basics Cookie security HTML parsing MIME sniffing Encoding sniffing Same-Origin Policy CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery)
- Request form https://www.tutorialspoint.com/http/http_requests.htm
- Response form https://www.tutorialspoint.com/http/http_responses.htm
- Response codes https://www.tutorialspoint.com/http/http_status_codes.htm
- URL Encoding https://www.tutorialspoint.com/http/http_url_encoding.htm
- Status Codes https://www.tutorialspoint.com/http/http_status_codes.htm
Recon is a common terminology used in bug bounties. It’s great if you are already using tools to scan a range of IPs for open ports or find subdomain, however, you should first understand why these things matter and how they work.
- Terminology https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-networking-terminology-interfaces-and-protocols
- What is an IP? https://commotionwireless.net/docs/cck/networking/learn-networking-basics/
- What are ports? https://www.utilizewindows.com/list-of-common-network-port-numbers/
- What is DNS? https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/an-introduction-to-learning-and-using-dns-records--cms-24704
- Intermediate Security Testing with Kali Linux 2 http://www.penguintutor.com/linux/basic-network-reference
Being a great programmer is not a requirement to be a successful hacker. However, having the ability to make an educated guess, may increase your chances of successfully identifying and exploiting an issue. In a number of cases, you may need to automate your work or know more than just the “basics” in order to escalate a bug with a medium severity to high/critical.
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HTML: HTML is very easy to learn and there are a ton of free resources for it. If you are interested in learning about XSS this should be your first step. If you prefer an interactive tool to learn about Javascript, I highly recommend Codecademy! https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html https://www.w3schools.com/html/
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JavaScript: Once you have familiarized yourself with HTML, you should understand Javascript since you will be using it to exploit XSS vulnerabilities. The usage of Javascript isn’t just limited to when you are exploring XSS, so it’s a very handy programming language to know. If you prefer an interactive tool to learn about Javascript, I highly recommend Codecademy! https://www.codecademy.com/learn/introduction-to-javascript
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SQL: You may have guessed It already, but you won’t be able to exploit complex SQL injection vulnerabilities before having any SQL knowledge. As always, if you prefer an interactive course, feel free to use Codecademy! https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-sql http://www.sqlcourse.com/
You are welcome to skip this section if you think you’ll never need any automation or in depth web application knowledge. However I think learning bash in addition to one the following four languages may help you work smarter rather than harder.
- Bash https://www.learnshell.org/
- Ruby https://www.learnrubyonline.org/
- Python https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/
- Additional Resources:
- Setting up your own web server on a VPS https://www.linux.com/learn/easy-lamp-server-installation
- Setting up virtualbox + linux https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-kali-linux-on-virtualbox
- Basics of UNIX https://lifehacker.com/5633909/who-needs-a-mouse-learn-to-use-the-command-line-for-almost-anything
- Setting up Burp https://www.hacker101.com/playlists/burp_suite
- Previously Disclosed Vulnerabilities https://hackerone.com/hacktivity
Need a description here
As we start to build this repository, we'll be adding more vulnerability types and resources for each one. XSS is a great place to start as it's one of the most popular and easiest vulnerabilities to find in a web application.
- Hacker101 https://www.hacker101.com/sessions/xss
- OWASP https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-site_Scripting_(XSS)
- A comprehensive tutorial on cross-site scripting https://excess-xss.com
- Google Application Security (XSS Guide) https://www.google.com/intl/am_AD/about/appsecurity/learning/xss/
- XSS-Game https://xss-game.appspot.com
- Hacker101 https://hacker101.com
- PentesterLab https://pentesterlab.com
- HackEdu https://hackedu.io
- DWVA http://www.dvwa.co.uk
- Google Gruyere https://google-gruyere.appspot.com/
You can find a ton of awesome XSS reports by searching through the HackerOne Hacktivity Page (https://hackerone.com/hacktivity?querystring=XSS). Here are some more complex and some of my favorite XSS related blog posts:
https://hackerone.com/reports/297968 https://hackerone.com/reports/168165 https://www.rafaybaloch.com/2017/06/a-tale-of-dom-based-xss-in-paypal.html
https://blog.bentkowski.info/2018/09/another-xss-in-google-colaboratory.html https://medium.com/@Alra3ees/google-adwords-3133-7-stored-xss-27bb083b8d27 https://opnsec.com/2018/03/stored-xss-on-facebook/ https://klikki.fi/adv/yahoo.html https://klikki.fi/adv/yahoo2.html https://hackerone.com/reports/422043 https://sites.google.com/site/bughunteruniversity/best-reports/account-recovery-xss
https://blog.bentkowski.info/2018/06/xss-in-google-colaboratory-csp-bypass.html