The following websites offer you a free and legal way to acquire practical hacking skills. If you are going to stop the bad guys, you need to know how they act to protect your own servers and wargames are the best way to be one of the bad guys without worrying about the FBI knocking at your door or harming anybody.
The computers you will be hacking in wargames are virtual machines that can be easily reset, and if you get lost, a community of white hackers will be willing to help you out teaming up with you or sharing experiences.
Exploit Exercises: A site giving you access to various virtual machines to hack, you will be given challenges, like scanning a network to find what vulnerabilities exist and how to exploit them. This site is admirably structured with the servers separated in between different hacking skills and levels. You can download a .iso or .ova (Open Virtual Application) and run it locally in your computer to hack it as if it was online.
HackerWars: Browser based hacking simulation game where you can play against other users in multiple missions, from installing viruses up to stealing money from online bank accounts, available for all platforms.
Pen Tester Lab: Full of penetration training exercises for people interested in becoming a PEN tester, tasks are clearly explained with links to the files you have to download if necessary, this is a paid website but some lessons are free.
HackThisSite: One of the wargame sites that has been the longest around, with a great hacking community that will help you expand your skills, you can chat with like minded people in HackThisSite forums or in the old school hacker’s communication tool IRC. This site stands out from the crowd with their extensive amount of free learning resources.
Hacker Project: A fictional hacking game set in the future where governments have gone bankrupt and multinationals take over the World stopping free flow of information. Your job will be to return power to the people by infiltrating corporations and use their information technology network against them. This site is for entertainment, you don’t hack anything for real, but the game is realistic.
CyberMission.tech: A website created by the United States Department of War to challenge your skills and test if you have what it takes to join a cyber team to defend freedom and liberty by building a secure cyber system and defend it from the bad guys.
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