Fundamentals? Theory? Scientific background? Who needs all of that?
This course is designed to get you on your feet and running as quickly as possible. It intentionally skips over most of the material our flagship course teaches, and gets you straight into doing things. Here is your rifle, point it that way.
To be honest, I don't recommend this approach, but it is very similar to the way I learned, so I am going to give you the option to do it. Likely you are taking this as a pre-req for our CTF course and want to dive into the material and figure out as you go. I respect that. This material is intended to be accessible for a student with no prior knowledge, so you will be up and operating in no time. Graduates of this course should not be confident in their skills or knowledge, but should be prepared to learn and do any basic scripting or tasks on Linux they come across.
At the end of the day, being able to do things beats just about everything else. If you want to know how the things you are doing work, take our fundamentals course.
Designed for Novices
This course assumes no technical knowledge (unlike every other beginner's guide). All you need is internet access and the desire to improve yourself.
Self-Paced
We set the curriculum, you set your schedule. This is a fast-paced adventure into learning how to get stuff done.
Time Investment
This course takes about 100 hours, maybe less. This is a fast-track, and you will just do things and hope to figure it out as you go. Instructors are always available.
What You Will Learn
You will leave this course with confidence that you can operate Linux and write basic Python. With those skills, you should be able to figure out the rest, but it will take a while to get all the other knowledge that is taught in our more comphrehensive course. We won't turn you into a hacker, but we will give you the tools to do it yourself.
Why You Should Learn With Us
To be truly good at security requires you to be a self-motivated learner and constantly seek out new information and new skills. For some reason, there seems to be an expectation that a beginner must be able to immediately jump in the deep end and figure it out from there. I made this course for my past self, who would have given anything to have a curriculum and a clear path forward, instead of stumbling through tweets, blog posts, google searches, forums and chatrooms for five years in search of knowledge. This course will teach you everything you need to continue your education on your own, or to stick with us and continue following the path we are building with our students.
Our goal isn't to teach you how to hack, our goal is to teach you how to learn.
The Curriculum Everything You Will Learn
Build Your Lab
- Virtualization
- VMWARE
- Ubuntu
- Personalize Your VM
Introduction to Linux
- Command Line
- Text-Fu
- User Management and Permissions
- Security
- Over the Wire: Bandit
Programming
- Languages
- Github
- HTML
- Python
- Python on Windows
- Python on Linux
Your Next Steps
- Start our CTF course
- Go do a random project and figure out what comes next
- Tell whoever sent you to this course that you finished it and you want more
Start Learning!
Start Now!
The entire course is free right now!
Begin the next chapter of your education today!
About the Author
Hello, I'm Dennis Devey!
I am the Strike Officer on USS Decatur (DDG 73) so my day job is ensuring the missiles and launchers are maintained and driving the ship, but I am working to lateral transfer into the Cyber Warfare Engineer community. By night I am an independent security researcher who is into education, malware command and control, and endpoint hardening. Back in school I was on our competitive Cyber Security Team and focused on building training for new members. I made this website to continue the work I had done and to share it with the widest audience possble.
For updates and new releases, follow Dennis and the official Roppers Academy Twitter account: @deveynull and @hoppersroppers
If you have any questions reach out to us and we will get back to you as soon as we can!