Computer Systems & Operating Systems – The Hacker’s Foundation

Alright, listen up. You wanna get into the hacking scene? Think you’re gonna jump straight into writing fancy exploits and popping shells? Pump the brakes for a second. Every master hacker, pentester, or security researcher has one thing in common: they know the system they’re targeting better than the people who built it.

This module, “The Hacker’s Foundation,” is where we build that deep, non-negotiable knowledge. This is your backstage pass to the main event—the Operating System. We’re tearing down the “it just works” magic and showing you the gears, wires, and code that make everything run.

So, what are we actually getting into?

We’re starting with the absolute fundamentals. How does your computer actually run multiple things at once? We’ll break down Processes & Threads—the DNA of every running program. Understanding this is your first step to mastering code execution, process injection, and figuring out what a system is really doing.

Next, we’re diving into Memory Management. This is the wild west of hacking. We’re talking about RAM, the stack, the heap—the places where secrets live and where legendary exploits like buffer overflows are born. You can’t own a system if you don’t understand its memory.

Then, we’re hitting the File Systems & Permissions. This is where the data lives, and more importantly, who’s allowed to touch it. We’ll show you how permissions can be a locked door… or a door that’s just pretending to be locked. This is the key to privilege escalation and maintaining access.

And none of it matters without User & Access Control. We’ll decode how systems decide if you’re a user, an admin, or a god. This is the cornerstone of identity, authentication, and authorization. To become someone else, you first have to know how the system decides who someone is.

Finally, we tie it all together with System Security & Exploitation. This is where it clicks. You’ll see how a weakness in memory, combined with a flaw in permissions, and a quirk in process management, creates the perfect storm for a full-system takeover.

This ain’t just theory. This is the mental model you NEED. It’s the foundation that turns a script kiddie into a real hacker. We’re learning how the castle is built, stone by stone, so we can find the secret passages and weak walls.