> I honestly feel that in the current day and age, if anyone tried the same stuff many of us got away with in the early 2000s (or 90s), then the punishment woul

> I honestly feel that in the current day and age, if anyone tried the same stuff many of us got away with in the early 2000s (or 90s), then the punishment would be much much stricter. Not sure how that gets in the way of people learning by "banging things together till they work", which was a major source of learning for me. There are still resources for this CTF365 comes to mind and the Offensive Security lab for their certs. There are also awesome people putting up networks you are invited to attack for free, there was one that was part of a workshop at HOPE XI but I can't recall the site. And running even multiple VMs to practice with is something a lot of people can do today.