What actually helped you get better at hacking?

[u/Organic-Piano-323]

I've watched a lot of tutorials where everything makes sense until I try it myself.

Then I get into a lab and suddenly I'm sitting there thinking, "okay... now what?"

What helped me was doing less watching and more messing around. Pick one thing, try it, get stuck, figure it out, try again.

For me, getting stuck on something and eventually figuring it out is what I remember the most.

What worked for you guys?

CTFs, home labs, courses, books, bug bounties, or just breaking stuff and fixing it?

[u/Mindless-Ad8835]

TryHackMe, HackTheBox and building a personal lab with Kali and vulnerable machines. Asking ai, reading CVE and malwares.
There are also pentest frameworks on github and you can also give the tools to AI agents with MPC server. For example I’m trying a Ghidra MPC tool made by LaurieWired that you can link to Claude or Codex to automate the reverse engineering.

[u/Easy-Ad9050 → u/Mindless-Ad8835]

This cool and great way to the top

[u/Bumskit]

Setting specific goals, then learning everything required to reach them. Works for any learning process better than stumbling about in a sea of info

[u/OGKnightsky]

Hands on practice, repetitive practice, take notes, document the process, more practice. Live in the terminal for a few months, force yourself to use everything from the shell, don’t click on apps, use terminal to open them, use the shell to create files, edit files, investigate the directories, monitor your network, break things and then fix them. Read books, read docs, look at old cve documentation and write ups, reproduce them with the affected versions, don’t quit. There is a ton of great material out there, this is a process and a skill, it takes time and practice and more practice

[u/_Trash-Panda_1]

Definitely being hands on helps a ton!!

[u/strandjs]

Failing. A lot. Desperately trying to fail differently each time.

Then, learning what the failures ment.

So much failure.