Nice and informative tutorial! It would be cool if you explained some of the methods on how to do the different things, like, how you would look up someones ports etc. Maybe not everyone needs it, but it would be even better if you had time to write such a tut. (Yes, i know people can google, wikipedia, whatever.. But tuts written by people from this community would be better)


+1 for the post anyways!

If you have not done so already, get an open source unix like Linux or BSD and learn to use it. I realize its probably not the 'fast track' method you are looking for but it is crucial to your success and understanding of what you are trying to accomplish. Once you have spent some time getting your bearings in the OS then you can begin to learn and utilize the tools that will get you what you want.

For instance the unix tool to identify open ports is called nmap but if you have never used a unix based OS, learning to use it or any of the necessary tools properly will be challenging at best and would be analogous to trying to use calculus without understanding basic algebra.

There are windows apps out there that will do the same thing but it will do all of the work for you and if you are serious about hacking you will need to understand every detail of what you are doing. Besides most web servers run a unix based OS and as a result having no understanding of the unix platform will limit your abilities to successfully exploit or hack one.

Learning everything you can about how these OS's work and learning to do everything manually will, in the end, make you into a true hacker and separate you from the hordes of script kiddies. 

check out distrowatch.com to find a good Linux or BSD to suit your needs and dual boot or run it off a usb or cd if you aren't comfortable abandoning windows just yet. Hope this helps.