This document provides an overview of hacking, including definitions, a brief history, famous hackers, the hacker attitude, basic hacking skills, and common hacking methods and attacks. It defines hacking as intruding on someone else's information space for malicious purposes. It discusses port scanning and ICMP scanning techniques used to gather target system information. Common attacks mentioned include denial-of-service attacks, threats from sniffers and key loggers, trojan attacks, and IP spoofing. The document provides details on specific attacks like ping of death and smurf attacks. It also discusses tools used and countermeasures to protect against hacking.