www.irongeek.com has done some article about hacking with the nokia N800 or something like that, can't remember exactly. I pentest wlans a lot so for me it would be great to be able to that with a pda.

*Fanaticism warning*

As a Linux fan I actually like that Microsoft are pushing their users, because as negrita said they're shooting themselves in the foot. So hopefully more XP users will consider Linux as alternative, and if not this bad image will hopefully stick until it's time to change again and then Linux will be the king!

Kev, which OS would you recommend as a base for a attack OS?

I just don't print the nessus scan, I also tell them they're in  deep shit and should probably hire someone to fix it *pointing at self*, should I charge extra for that?

Well, thats another advatage for me, I'm *maybe* the only one in a 100km radius that does these things. I was thinking about roughly 50 dollars, so i've got it confirmed, and i'll see what the feedbak is from the customers. And thank you all replies, on topic and otherwise

I was testing a corp. wireless network, so pen test is a exaggeration, they had WEP and I told them so. So the question is what should I ask for this service? I spent roughly three hours at it, including a info meeting with CEO and IT dept. boss, and they went on to fix the WLAN themselves, so my involvment ended there, but will come and check it out once they've switched to WPA. So how much and how much does education and skill weigh in?

Locomotive, the best thing you can do is to buy some books about hacking, how-to and tutorials from the net are good, but to really develop some skills you'll have to read some books which are intended for IT professionals. My recommendation would be Hacking Exposed, as a introduction, and Grey Hat Hacking for some more in depth exploitation. And perhaps TCP/IP Illustrated, but I havn't read it so can't recommend it. And good luck to you.

Oh, and remeber, this is only my opinion not the word of a überhacker.

Anyone else then me seeing the third world war being fought in "cyberspace", the digital frontier come truth.

The epic battle of the search engines, this is going to be interesting. By the way did you know that yahoo mail no longer has any space limits. Is it yahoo hacking next?

Or you could just have opened it in linux from the very beginning

We're all here to answer your questions, if sensibly asked, so fire away! And don't forget to use the search function

And while we're on this topic what is a typical pay for a Security Consult/Pen tester per hour/job. How does it change with your degree of education? How much can a 17 year old, without any security education, "hobby" hacker expect to be paid?

Note: I've actually done a job for a corp. and it's therefor a relevant question.

Hacking, I think, is largely about curiosity, what happens if I do this? Isn't that how all new kinds of exploits are discovered? And that's why the most of us feels the to break in to a system, to see if we can, or how it works. So Kev you're right it's a mindset, one of curiosity and exploration.

Too bad they're not offering it to the whole world...

I get a free open smtp server, without credentials, from my ISP, sent some spoofed mail between teachers, as a joke (which they liked), anyway, they restrict it to their own IP ranges, maybe your ISP has something like that?