Many people that have emailed me asking for explanations, or commentary on stuff that I wrote have the same lament. Learning and breaking their way into computer security is a dauting task. Having to learn about firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), networking protocols, PERL scripting, and the list goes on and on. The common refrain is that it is near impossible to learn all of this. Not only that, but simply starting to learn basic theory such as networking theory is often too difficult. Well, the answer is pretty folks, suck it up learn it. There is no way spoonfeed this type of information. You simply need to bear down and study hard. It can be done. After all I did it, as have countless others.