How did you learn cyber security, especially pentesting ?

I know that making VM lab and/or doing CTFs and reading writeups can help a lot, but is there any more "formal" way to get into things like pentesting etc. ?

(Without having to pay for OSCP, Sans and all this)

Experience beats everything.

@PrivateGER But where do you get such experience ?

@shinobiultra Try hackthebox.eu. Free website. You even have to hack the register form to get an invite code.

I think overTheWire and CTF365 are great places to start, and to get experience from in general.

On youtube there is also a 10 hour long "hacking" tutorial that explains all the basic stuff very well. There are some decent channels out there like liveOverflow.

Participate in Hackathons and Capture The Flags irl events. Always fun and very educational. Most of the time there is always free food btw ^-^

Try to stay away from sites like hackerforum, blackhathacking or any other 'hacking' groups on fesabook, reddit or discord. Or any of those 'hacking' channels on youtube that claim to use Kali as their main OS. You'll easily find out that these only exist of edgy 12 years old.

CyberPatriot/CyberTitan is how I got started