Learn cybersecurity for free, from scratch

What is HACKME?

HACKME is a web app that teaches cybersecurity through play, made for complete beginners. It explains in plain words how attacks happen and how to protect yourself: passwords, email and WhatsApp scams, Wi-Fi, your phone, permissions, exposed files and a server terminal.

It is free for everyone, with no credit card and no paid trial. It works in the browser on your phone or computer, and you can install it like an app.

How it works

• Short lessons

  Each topic takes just a few minutes, with everyday examples and the option to listen to it read aloud.

• Games

  After each lesson you practice with games: spot fake emails, build strong passwords, make choices in stories with real consequences.

• Daily streak

  A few minutes a day is enough. Your streak helps you come back tomorrow and keep going.

• Smart review

  What you get wrong comes back the next day, and what you know comes back less and less often (1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 days).

• Practice terminal

  You type real commands in a safe practice terminal: search files, read logs and solve missions, with nothing to break.

• Ethics first

  Every attack is practiced in a simulated environment. Before the attack levels, you accept an ethics pledge.

The 11 levels of the course plan

From your very first step to a professional level. The first levels are ready to play; the rest are on the way.

1. 1 First steps

   Understand how an attacker thinks and what you are protecting. Create strong passwords, turn on two-step verification, spot fake emails, messages and calls, and look after your router, your phone and your backups.

   Available · 14 lessons

2. 2 Opening doors

   Tell the difference between who you are and what you are allowed to do in a system, recognize wrong permissions, files that should never be public and leaked keys, and know what to do when one leaks.

   Available · 6 lessons

3. 3 Technical foundations

   Use a real terminal: move around a server, search files, read logs, understand permissions and respond to a small incident. Then, encryption and how data travels across a network.

   Available · 3 lessons

4. 4 Systems and identity

   Set up devices wisely, control who gets in and to what, keep everything up to date and recover if something goes wrong.

   Coming soon

5. 5 Web, APIs and secure code

   Understand how the web talks (requests, APIs, sessions), see how an injection or XSS tricks a website (only on a toy site) and write code that does not fall into those traps.

   Coming soon

6. 6 Authorized ethical hacking

   Practice ethical hacking with a method and with permission: define the scope, look for flaws, test them in a simulated environment and report what you found.

   Coming soon

7. 7 Defense and monitoring

   Read logs, tell the odd from the normal, detect attacks with alerts and rules, and defend a network with firewalls.

   Coming soon

8. 8 Incidents and resilience

   Respond to an incident in the first minutes, collect evidence without breaking it and keep things running while you recover.

   Coming soon

9. 9 Cloud and devices

   Protect accounts and permissions in the cloud, understand containers and suppliers, and look after phones and connected devices.

   Coming soon

10. 10 Governance and risk

    Measure risks, choose controls, learn the basics of privacy laws and build a security program for an organization.

    Coming soon

11. 11 AI and professional wrap-up

    Use AI safely (and know how it gets attacked), solve a full campaign from start to finish and present a final project.

    Coming soon

See the course plan →

Start here

1. What cybersecurity is and why it's your business

   Cybersecurity means protecting what you have in the digital world: your accounts, your photos, your money in the bank, your messages and the devices you…

2. Who attacks, what they want and how they move forward

   It's almost never someone who picked you personally. The most common attacks are mass attacks: a program sends the same trap message to a million people…

3. The three things we protect

   Everything cybersecurity does can be summed up as protecting three things. Professionals call them the CIA triad: Confidentiality, Integrity and…

Frequently asked questions