To begin with, we note that the question “How to become a hacker?”, we consider exclusively as a theoretical question, or as a desire to become a “white hat” (ethical hacker). The illegal activity of “black hats” (especially from the category of “bad guys”) is strongly condemned by the author.

Let’s formulate the definition of an ethical hacker.

An ethical hacker is a high—level information security specialist whose main activity is the search for vulnerabilities in computer systems.

a) this is an information security specialist (that is, there are no fundamental differences in terms of education between those who create defenses and those who hack them, these are two sides of the same coin),
b) this is a high-level specialist, since defenses are developed, to put it mildly, by intelligent people. Among them, by the way, are often the same former hackers, which once again confirms the previous point.