Seeking a Mentor

[Saigne]

Hello, everybody. First, I must admit that I am very new to the world of memory editing, reverse engineering, and the like, but I am very interested in learning more about it. I have a little C++ experience, but nothing more than you would learn in a month or two of a college course. I've read halfway into several books on the subject, but end up getting distracted with work, family, and whatnot, and when I get the free time again, I find myself having to read previous chapters to remember where I was.

I'm in my 30's and have worked with computers as far back as I can remember, and have fancied myself as a quick learner and have many academic awards, but I must admit that finding a solid starting point in game hacking is difficult. I would love to learn more about the subject, and I suppose SWTOR would be as good of a learning platform as any other. Would anybody out there be willing to get me started in the right direction? This can be as simple as pointing me in the direction of a book, or as complex as taking me under your guidance as your protégé. I would appreciate the later, but any good advice is better than nothing, I suppose.

Just remember that I am human, just like you, and have to start somewhere.

[FuryExploiting]

Ask Drakefish.

Awesome that you're into learning it.

[Saigne]

I'm not sure who that is. Send him a private message on these forums, I suppose? It feels weird sending a message like that to somebody who I do not know, yet.

[Forza44]

Star Wars is not a very good place to start primarily because it heavily relies on it's own scripting language which is going to be irrelevant on any other engine. As a matter of fact, I think MMO's in general probably wouldn't be the best place to start - although I'm sure many would disagree with me. Your best bet if you want to start with MMO's, in my opinion, would be WoW simply because of the fact that there is such a huge amount of information on it. However, we're getting ahead of ourselves, the first and most important thing for you to do will be to start learning the basics of C++. This can be done through a vast array of books freely available on the web as well as many forums dedicated to the subject. Personally I would suggest doing the following things in the following order.

1.) Download C++ Primer's 6th Edition PDF which you can find on Google.
2.) Begin reading and make sure you pay close attention and follow EVERY exercise from start to finish. Make sure you fully understand every concept in each chapter before moving to the next.
3.) Once you are finished with this book you should be able to realize whether you have any interest in the subject. I am telling you right now and please take this seriously, you will get NOWHERE if you don't enjoy programming. The enjoyment people get out of this is what enables them to become so great at it so if all you want to do is get past the boring part so you can make bots then you will never succeed in doing so.
4.) Begin reading how the Windows OS works internally, an excellent place to find articles on this subject would be MSDN. Understand how different API's work such as ReadProcessMemory / VirtualAlloc. Download some DLL injectors source code and look through every line so you understand exactly how it works. Write your own injector by yourself before moving on, it's important that you understand how these basic concepts work.
5.) Now you're finally ready to start looking through some actual cheat / bot source code yourself. This does NOT mean you are ready to write your own! Download some public source codes and look through everything, see how different things like loot automation are done by the cheat. Read through everything until you have a strong understanding of how it works. Start changing some areas of the code that you think could be improved, add new features, etc.
6.) Once you find a source you're comfortable with and learn how to tweak it to your liking and add new features then you should start your reverse engineering lessons. Learn how IDA / OllyDbg work, figure out how bot authors find various addresses in memory, learn how signatures work, learn to use cross references and strings to find what you're looking for, learn how to use breakpoints and hooks, etc. You should also spend some serious time reading up on the assembly language during this stage.
7.) For more advanced assembly / reverse engineering tutorials the best option is to look at your own programs. You really want to know what you're looking for while reverse engineering or even simple things can turn into a huge pain. The best way to learn this stuff is to write it out yourself and reverse it yourself, that way you know how the actual code looks and how it gets converted into assembly code.
8.) Alright now you have a moderate understanding of programming and how bots / cheats are structured. Hopefully you have at least a basic understanding of how to do your own reverse engineering and how assembly language works. Now you should start writing your own base from scratch, if you feel as though you're ready. This will not be easy and you will probably get incredibly frustrated several times during the next few months.
9.) Continue to read articles and practice the art of reverse engineering. This is very important. You must spend as much time as you can actually doing some reversing yourself because it's not like programming in the sense where you can just learn it from reading. Reverse engineering takes a lot of in the field training in order to master. Programming obviously takes much experience as well but can be taught in books far easier than reversing.
10.) Well you should now be at a point where you have a moderate understanding of both programming and reverse engineering. You are a still a long way from being an expert but you should be very comfortable with your knowledge at this point. Hopefully you get here within 1-2 years and you are able to help others achieve similar goals. Although it is always good to have someone to go to for help, you don't want a mentor to be teaching you this stuff. You can easily learn it all on your own if you spend the time working at it.

Good Luck!