Disclaimer: If you think you're G0D of Hackers, DO NOT READ THIS. Content provided here does not mean CORRECT, or TRUE TO THE UNIVERSAL LAWS OF Security/Hacking. Take it or leave it. Use it at your 0wn risk. _________________________________________________________________________________ Things to avoid/note as a (Beginning) Security Researcher Aung Khant, http://yehg.net 10:50 PM Thursday, September 02, 2010 Last update: 2010-09-25 ==================================================== - Hacking/Security Tools development Motto: Save Time. Your time is your life. Save Energy. Don't re-invent the wheel. Caution: Check your plans/functions have been implemented or are being developed by someone. Recently, a lot of guys have written a lot of web app finger printers. A lot of guys have written web application directory brute forcers. A lot of nmap folks seem to clone nessus/openvas vulnerability checks where nmap and its NSE should largely be used for extensive app and OS/network devices/... fingerprinting. Yes, I know that they are moving to NMap Security Suite. What if the existing scanners/tools need something you want? Contribute it. Contact author. If no reply, steal his code, add yours, and publish it with full credit to him. - Exploit Development Motto: Save Time. Your time is your life. Save Energy. Don't re-invent the wheel. A lot of guys learn exploit writing and are finding new flaws each day. What's better, they should study old exploits firsts, convert exploit-db/injector stuffs into Metasploit formats so that everyone can use it right away. A lot of exploits found in exploit-db/Injector can be converted to Metasploit platform. Similarly, Do exploit development in Metasploit platform whenever possible to save time and effective reuse of the exploits. Constraints posed by Metasploit platform: - Metasploit is just an application that relies on Ruby framework. You should look for work-rounds in third-party languages/applications for anything that's not supported by Ruby. Post missing features you want in ruby mailing list so that someone will pop up and code it. - Responsible Full Disclosure Motto: - Disclose your advisory responsibly. - Never cause harm and damage to users at large because of your advisory, ego, boosting the world with how smart you are. - Never release advisory that has no solution or no mitigation issues - Give the vendor enough time to fix and release new version - Save - frustrations of users of being hacked. - administrators' nightmares - developers' daily late night work as pressured from management to rust out patched versions .. to be continued