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Like qaisjp said, do a lot of CTFs.


Cyber security is a vast field with many potential sub-categories you can delve into: software reverse engineering, hardware reverse engineering, pentesting, cryptography, steganography etc. - The list is long.


For more info about ctf's and which ones are hosted:

• https://ctftime.org/ctf-wtf/
  
  
  CTF's are usually separated into different subcategories and many people specialize in a few of them (not necessarily all), so I'd recommend you take a look around and see what you find interesting.
  
  
  Useful sites to visit:
  
  
• https://www.hackthebox.eu/
  
• https://overthewire.org/wargames/
  
• https://ringzer0ctf.com
  
• https://cryptopals.com/
  
• http://ae27ff.meme.tips/
  
• https://ctftime.org
  
• https://nostarch.com/ (very HQ technical books)
  
  
  Reading CTF write-ups is also very useful, taking a look at how challenges are structured and how people solved them will give you insight into different ways of thinking about various problems. Reading a few might be a good idea, and perhaps you fill find a few categories that might be interesting: https://ctftime.org/writeups (Other write-ups may be found just by googling, a lot of blogs and github's out there)
  
  
  Personally, I am very reverse engineering focused so I will mostly be able to help you with resources in that area.
  
  
  RE links to take a look at:
  
  
• https://github.com/wtsxDev/reverse-engineering
  
• http://amzn.to/2jljYqE (Must read book if you want to delve into RE)
  
• https://beginners.re/
  
• https://revers.engineering/applied-reverse-engineering-series/ (a blog my friend made)
  
  
  If you do RE, coding is also vital (people tend to do C++ and/or C together with x86/x64 ASM, the latter which is essential for RE in the first place), but it is not exclusive to RE, coding is crucial in many if not all CTF categories and I think having a start as a programmer is a good way to enter parts of cyber security.
  
  
  There is also a reverse engineering discord, which I think you could benefit from, a lot of information can be found on there about various kinds of reversing:
  
  https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/comments/9n2qcb/join_the_reverse_engineering_discord_active/
  
  
  I think a lot also boils down to reading books, blogs etc. and having good knowledge of how various things work, the links above should be of help, and should lead you to other useful resources as well. You do not necessarily have to switch majors, good computer knowledge is very helpful, and most cyber sec people I know do either compsci, math + compsci, or just math. In the end it just boils to doing things however, and ctf's are a great way to do that.
  
  PS. With reversing you can also delve into game hacking which is super interesting and a lot of people do really funky shit with things like the windows kernel!
  
  If you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask.

> How Useful are e-Books for Studying?

It depends. Personally, books of any kind tend to be hit-or-miss with me when it comes to studying. They tend to suck the life out of me very, very quickly due to density/dryness. Instead, I like to find videos of the material I'm wanting to learn and watch those instead - preferably in a MOOC structure. This way it makes it easier for me to stay focused with a well-defined start and ending point, and most MOOCs tend to follow a "you watched, now do" style of teaching along with several exercises along the way which I love. There's plenty of resources out there like Lynda.com, Coursera, or Udacity that offer beginner courses up to the advaced stuff in c++ and/or python.

> I'm currently looking into the Humble Bundle e-books they're offering this time around and wanted to ask for input on how helpful they would be.

Are you referring to this bundle? If so that is a big haul of material and adjacent tools (not to say it's not a good price though). If you value the books at what they're offering, then go for it. I'd just say it's a little over-kill for a beginner.

If you are hard-pressed on following a standard textbook/e-book format, I'd recommend Python Crash Course. It has been the only book I've gone through front-to-back. It's a great intro to python and switches into a project-based structure later on in the book. It also has subsequent books that cover other types of projects in python.

Hit the books ! More specifically this one : https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Operating-Systems-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/013359162X it’s a great book, it explains the concepts really well and also has code examples. Tho I recommend reading about computer architecture a bit to understand it better, this is also a great book for it https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Architecture-William-Stallings/dp/0134101618
But really read all of the tanenbaum’s book, I got an A because of it, it’s an amazing book.

This is the laptop I got and it worked great the whole time with great battery life. Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-53VG Laptop, 15.6 Full HD (Intel Core i5, NVIDIA 940MX, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, Windows 10) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DT4A2R4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CXOBCb7KHGRMX
I did have to add a hard drive to it but that was easy and not too expensive.

Have you seen the MIPS WikiBooks site?

It's not complete, but after a cursory inspection it looks as though it may be useful for beginners.

What textbook is your class using? I believe that the textbook my course assigned (though I may or may not be able to recommend it as I may or may not have ever read it...) was this one.

I learned most of what I know from Robert Sedgewick, whose prose is exceeded in clarity only by his diagrams:

https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-4th-Robert-Sedgewick/dp/032157351X

Steve Skiena is also excellent, and writes a bit more accessibly:

https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/dp/1849967202

You can usually find these on the shelves of a university library.

Elements of Programming Interviews. Personally I found this book more helpful than CtCI as its topics were more focused and relevant to the types of questions I had gotten in technical interviews.

A lot of people recommended this book to me: Inspired. More relevant to Product Management than programming, but the concepts are probably useful to anyone in tech.

I always found Stanford list a great place to start with C and Data Structures: http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/

A classic book in C++ and DS would be Algorithams in C++ by Robert Sedgewick

My assumption is you're talking about parrallel computing such as CUDA, OpenCL, and GPUs. The textbook I used was: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Massively-Parallel-Processors-Hands/dp/0128119861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550606052&sr=8-1&keywords=programming+massively+parallel+processors

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I liked this series from udacity: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGvfHSgImk4aweyWlhBXNF6XISY3um82_

Not specifically C++, but I would snag a book by Tony Gaddis. I'm using Starting Out with Java right now for an intro to programming course using Java.

I think the book explains programming concepts really well. I refer to it for a second programming course I'm taking as that book does not explain programming concepts very well. It lists the answers for odd questions in the back of the book.

I'm not sure which jackets you mean? Do you mean like the North Face jackets or Canada Goose? Could you describe them a little?

I read about the first 30% of this one: https://www.amazon.com/Java-Concurrency-Practice-CONCURRENCY-PRACT-ebook/dp/B004V9OA84/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537968497&sr=1-1

Would recommend.

facebooks version of a site reliability engineer






https://www.amazon.com/Seeking-SRE-Conversations-Running-Production/dp/1491978864
chapter 12 of this book has a more detailed description of the specific role at FB.

https://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-SQL-Hours/dp/0672335417

I'm not sure I can find the book, all I could find was this which was published in 1999

There was this book that was based on CS topics but in a fairy tale setting. It had a princess, dragon, etc but it also talked about divide and conquer, etc. Don't remember the name of the book though, sorry.

EDIT: found it... https://www.amazon.com/Computational-Fairy-Tales-Jeremy-Kubica-ebook/dp/B008EYHUDY

Its 200 pages but you don't need to read all of it.