[bitexploder]

What do you want to get good at? 'Memory corruption' is the term of art for these vulns. There are a lot of areas you can learn "enough" of.

Start with the Micro Corruption CTF. See which part you enjoy the most (finding, analyzing, exploiting). Each use similar but different skills.

You need to get good at assembly/machine code. You have to learn the patterns of what compiled code translates back to (structs, exception handlers, logic, etc). Machine code is the one constant. Notice how the author had mapped C structs in his hex editor? That is the sort of thing that gets you back to a conceptual hacking level instead of being down in the weeds. Get good at doing those things.