A hobby.

[Mandy Amnell <mandy_amnell () hotmail com>]

Hi experts :-)

I'm posting here with a bunch of questions to you guys, that you will hopefully be able to shed light on.

I have been using linux for about 3 years now and for each day that passes security, coding and the like is getting my 
attention more and more.

See the thing is, everything I have learned so far I did by myself from online material, guides, tutorials, and so on. 
I have gotten to a point where I feel that I am stuck though. I started coding c for about 6 months ago, I have had no 
books nor education in the field although I feel I have gotten pretty far without it. I have been able to write a few 
small programs based on networking, and just recently begun reading up on how to code using raw sockets, (god the 
headache of writing packet headers!)

Very recently I also got into testing buffer overflows, how they work and alittle touch of assembly, although it's very 
hard and a bit confusing for someone like me. I was able to put together a "vulnerable" test program, and then on to 
make a simple tool to exploit it, interesting stuff indeed!

There's so many whys, hows though, this is the part where I am stuck. I don't work with computers, never have. This is 
purely a hobby and I find it very interesting todo this kind of stuff, self-satisfaction I guess.

I think the big question is how to proceed for my part? How can I fill in all the missing links, how to understand all 
this a bit better? A proper education is out of the question because of economical reasons plus the fact that this is 
purely a hobby.

Since I have no books about this stuff or related things I was thinking maybe you could recommend some?

Basically I think I understand enough about Networking itself (Probably not) but anyway I was thinking more like 
programming books, stuff that someone like me can understand and make use of :-)

Assembly Book?
C-coding?
Perhaps more general books?

You can tell me how you started out, maybe give me a few pointers, other than education. I figured, I have gotten this 
far, why stop now.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forum Systems PRESIDIO: PGP / XML GATEWAY APPLIANCE
The Presidio integrates PGP data encryption and XML Web Services security to 
simplify the management and deployment of PGP and reduce overall PGP costs 
by up to 80%.
FREE WHITEPAPER & 30 Day Trial - 
http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/ForumSystems_security-basics_031027 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------