I'm New and Stupid, got any good advice?

I'm new to computer security. I don't know much of anything... I'm serious. Is there a good way to become knowlegeable in this? If so PLEASE HELP ME!


-J

Read and play.

Make sure you go through the tutorials in the Tutorials forum. Also, hopefully you have access to a second machine with which you can play. If you see some subject in the tutorials which interests you, linux, packet sniffing, intrusion detection, jump right into it.

I think that starting a project is probably on of the best ways to learn. I do it fairly often, pick a somewhat advanced project, and start doing it. I invariably find all sorts of stuff that I need to know in order to work my way through the project. I always learn quite a bit.

Also, remember your best friend www.google.com

Good luck, and enjoy the journey,

IchNiSan

A second computer that you can just try stuff on and format the hard drive every couple of days is an invaluable learning tool. As for where to start learning, TCP/IP is always a good start http://www.learntcpip.com/

For computer security, AntiOnline is a great place to start, you may want to also check out http://eyeonsecurity.org/news/

Well, I would sugest that you read anything that interests you. Thats all I do, every day I visit google, my start page. I think of something that I would like to know more about, like one day I was interested in knowing what PHP was all about, I hered of it but never knew much about it, so I searched for "what is php" with the quotes, and from there I set up php on my own web server so I could play around with it.

A few people just mentioned tcp/ip so if you are interested in that you can use the site that was sugested or do your own google search on it.

Some people like the planed out aproach, but im more spontainious, I like to jump from project to project.

You are in the right site dude.. it's good place to start for learning security comp,etc..You will find good advise from respectable AO members..here

Wellcome to AO....from Aussie :)

well for a start we are always new to something, the only time you'd be considered stupid here is if you ask anything to do with hacking hotmail and that sorta junk, the best way to learn is defenitely to read tute, online books and mags, the newbie questions forum is a great place to start as well as chit-chat and tutes forums

make yourself at home really and reply to questions if you think you can help and you'll be well on your way to learning new things

While this is a great site,theres lots of stuff here I find to be over my head,having never touched a computer until 3 years ago.......Already in my mid 40s at the time....

There is a site, http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/index.html/ ,that has dumbed down for the masses info on security,that I find helps me to follow more involved topics here...

I am new here also , and have already found the message forums to be very helpful.