I often see questions like this on Zhihu:
- Learning XXX knowledge is ineffective;
- There is no direction in learning XXX skills;
- There is no way to get started with learning XXX;
Let me give you a piece of advice. If you have no foundation at all, it is best not to blindly search for information to learn in the early stage, because after most people collect the information, they basically put it in their favorites and collect dust. At the same time, they collect more information. You will be confused when you learn, and it will also make you very stressed.
Sharpening a knife does not waste time cutting firewood. If you are planning to self-study, you should proceed step by step:
The first step: Build a self-study knowledge framework. I will talk about how to build a learning framework specifically later;
Step 2: Customize phased learning plans and goals for yourself according to the learning framework. It is best to provide self-feedback and adjustments on a weekly basis;
Step 3: Find suitable self-study resources for your weekly study plan. Pay attention, only find what you need now, don’t be greedy for more.
Step 4: Find a few knowledgeable people and have a good relationship with them. If you encounter any problems later in the learning process, there will be people who can answer them for you;
All this must be done step by step, don’t think about eating it all in one go and becoming a big fat man.
There are also tricks to building a learning framework, such as the three methods I commonly use:
- Become friends with awesome people, it can be friends around you or colleagues in the company, but be careful, remember to treat people to dinner to build a good relationship, otherwise few people will help you at the critical moment;
- Search for roadmaps of the knowledge points you want to know from various blog websites, and then find highly praised blog posts. Basically, they are not bad, but you must pay attention to distinguish the authenticity;
- Find a few more training institutions to see what the course syllabus they have compiled is like and what knowledge points are involved, and then classify and summarize it. I won’t go into details, so as not to make people think that I am advertising for training institutions;
Without further ado, let’s take a look at a picture to see what are the directions of network security, what are the relationships and differences between them, and what do you need to learn about each.
(The upload has always been very blurry, so it has not been expanded. If you need a high-definition version, please tell me in the comment area)
In this circle of technical categories, jobs mainly fall into the following three directions:
Security R&
D Security Research: Binary Direction
Security Research: Network Penetration Direction
Let’s explain each one below.
The first direction: safety research and development
You can think of network security as the e-commerce industry, education industry and other industries. Each industry has its own software research and development, and network security as an industry is no exception. The difference is that the R&D in this industry is the development and network security business. related software.
In this case, common positions in other industries also exist in the security industry, such as front-end, back-end, big data analysis, etc. However, in addition to such general development positions, there are also some R&D positions closely related to the security business.
This classification can be further divided into two sub-types:
Do security product development, defense,
security tool development, attack
Firewall, IDS, IPS
WAF (Web Website Application Firewall)
Database Gateway
NTA (Network Traffic Analysis)
SIEM (Security Incident Analysis Center, Situational Awareness)
Big Data Security Analysis
EDR ( Security software on end devices)
DLP (Data Leakage Prevention)
antivirus software
Security detection sandbox
To sum up, most of the products developed for security are used to detect and resist security attacks, involving the terminal side (PC computers, mobile phones, network equipment, etc.)
The technologies used to develop these products are mainly based on the three major technology stacks of C/C++, Java, and Python, with a small amount of GoLang and Rust.
Security R&D positions, compared to the other two directions, have lower requirements for network security technology (only relatively speaking, the R&D of some products does not require low security skills). I have even seen many companies’ R&D that have no regard for security. Know. In this case, if you have some understanding of network security technology in addition to basic development skills, it will naturally be a bonus when you interview for these positions.
The second direction: binary security
Binary security direction is one of the two major technical directions in the security field.
This direction mainly involves software vulnerability mining, reverse engineering, virus and Trojan analysis, etc., and involves operating system kernel analysis, debugging and anti-debugging, anti-virus and other technologies. Because we often deal with binary data, over time binary security is used to collectively refer to this direction.
The characteristic of this direction is: you need to be able to endure loneliness.
It is not as good as security research and development, which can produce real product output, and it is not as cool as the network penetration direction. This direction spends more time silently analyzing and researching.
Taking vulnerability mining as an example, it takes a lot of time just to learn the various attack techniques. In this field, it may take months or even years to study a problem, which is definitely not something that ordinary people can persist in. Not only that, success does not depend on hard work, but more on talent.
Figures such as the heads of Tencent's major security labs, the industry's well-known TK leader, and Wu Shi have already understood the secrets of vulnerability mining and have mastered this skill. They can even think of new ways to play in their dreams. However, geniuses like this are very few and far beyond the reach of most people.
If programmers are hard workers, then binary security research is hard work Plus
The third direction: network penetration
This direction is more in line with most people's understanding of "hackers". They can hack mobile phones, hack computers, hack websites, hack servers, hack intranets, and hack everything.
Compared with the binary security direction, this direction is easier to get started in the early stage. You can master some basic technologies and use various ready-made tools to start hacking.
However, if you want to change from a script boy to a hacker master, the further you go in this direction, the more things you need to learn and master.
The direction of network penetration is more "actual combat", so it has higher requirements on the breadth of technology, from network hardware equipment, network communication protocols, network services (web, mail, files, databases, etc.), to operating systems, attacks You need to understand the techniques and so on. He is more inclined to be an all-round computer expert who can integrate various technologies for "actual combat".
Now let’s talk about the learning route. The content is a bit long, so you can like it first so that you don’t get lost and can find it back in time.
How to get started?
After talking about the big picture, let’s move on to specific technical points and show you the Web security learning route I’ve developed for my team members. It takes about half a year in total, depending on each person’s situation.
If you refine the content you have to learn every week to this level, would you still worry about whether you can learn it or get started? In fact, in the final analysis, you have studied for two months, but you have learned a little here and there, a little here and there, etc. The contents are all superficial and not in-depth, so I feel like I have been studying for 2 months and can't get started.
Finally
In order to help everyone learn network security better, the editor has prepared an introductory/advanced learning material for network security for everyone. The content in it is all notes and materials suitable for beginners with zero basic knowledge. It can be understood even if you don’t know programming. Understand, all the information is 282G in total. If friends need a complete set of network security introduction + advanced learning resource package, you can click to receive it for free (if you encounter problems with scanning the QR code, you can leave a message in the comment area to receive it)~
CSDN gift package: "Network Security Introduction & Advanced Learning Resource Package" free sharing
Network security source code collection + tool kit
Network
security interview questions
Finally, there is the network security interview questions section that everyone is most concerned about.
All the information is 282G in total. If friends need a full set of network security introductory + advanced learning resource packages, you can click to get it for free ( If you encounter problems with scanning the code, you can leave a message in the comment area to get it)~
Video supporting materials & domestic and foreign network security books and documents
