Can I learn penetration testing at home?
I am interested in learning ethical hacking or penetration testing to head towards a career in that direction.
Are there any courses or interactive programs, for free, that I can do from home that I can teach myself this information?
A bonus would be giving programming lessons useful in this area, for example teaching JavaScript to demonstrate cookie attacks and manipulations.
Free options are few, but there are tons of videos and tutorials on specific attack vectors or products/tools. They will NOT make you a Penetration Tester, but they are free learning resources to learn penetration testing. Some decent options to start you off:
MetaSploit Unleashed: Learn an exploitation framework
SecurityTube: various videos covering a multitude of topics
NMap: The standard network enumeration tool
Web Application Hacker's Handbook: It's not free, but it is the bible on Web App Security
For practice, there are a number of resources:
Metasploitable VM (and other purposely vulnerable VMs)- DVWA
- Mutillidae
- WebGoat
- Vulnhub
- hack.me
Do some searching on this site for other people offering opinions on free learning resources. But, the only way to learn is to get your hands dirty.