Introduction

Many people go searching through google  using the phrase "How to hack" or "Learn to hack" well the answer is  more complicated than that after trawling through many ebooks and forums and I only really found 1 or 2 good quality answers. And here goes...

1) Programming.
I have come across this on many occasions. The reason you need it know a programming language is because many high quality hackers or "leet hackers" often have to improvise if there plan does not work properly. Also many hackers write there own programs so they are able to go undetected for longer.

2) Learn the hierarchy.
The hacking Hierarchy consists of 2 main groups and 3 different stages. There are both white hat and black hat hackers. White hat are the good guys there are usually pen testers and have permission to be testing a system for vulnerabilities. Where as Black hat are the bad guys who seek to enrich there lives by scamming and harming other people.

Now here are the 3 stages of hacking.

Script Kiddie.
These are looked down on in the hacking community as they often use tools made by other people and do not know what is happening behind the scenes. They are also known as skids on hacking related forums.

Intermediate Hackers.
These are hackers who have some knowledge about what is happening and might be able to cover their tracks, they usually use programs made by other people most likely real hackers.

Leet Hackers.
These are the real thing, they know how to hack almost any system and cover their tracks so that it seems like someone else has done the hacking. These are the people who make the programs that are used by skids etc.

Once you have both these things in mind you are able to start looking into how to hack properly. There are a few forums to use for information like www.hackcommunity.com  or www.hackforums.net but be careful when visiting these forums as hackforums contains an awful lot of skids and so you fail to learn anything there.

Now a programming language, I would recommend that you either start with C, Python or Perl. I have recommend these as python and Perl both have many opportunities to write exploits and C does not require any dependency's to run your programs.