Programming SKills for PT...?

["Swaminathan, Balaji" <Balaji.Swaminathan () kla-tencor com>]

Hi all,

I work on Firewalls, IDS/IPS for the past 3yrs approx since I have
finished my graduation. I had no interest on programming and I almost
hated it (2 be frank I have bunked even my C, C++ classes in college).
Luckily I was into Networking, Security etc. But I am very much
fascinated towards Vulnerability Assessment, Penetration Testing stuffs
and am into similar projects for the past 6 months and want to shift my
career to it. Though I had played with some tools (Nessus, retina, ISS,
Metasploit, netcat...), I want to get into the real programming stuff
required to find vulnerabilities, write exploit codes and develop tools.


   In my opinion, though all the open source exploits, tools are
available, you cannot call urself as an hacker atleast an ethical hacker
unless you try to figure out them on your own. So pls let me know:

1. What are the programming/scripting languages needed to accompolish
the above?
2. I see most of the real hackers are well proficient in almost all of
the the technologies like Networking, Application/WebApplcn testing, OS
etc. Is it so...?
3. Are there any other skills/requirements that you can suggest to be a
successful Hacker?

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Balaji

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