Do I need any special hardware for my PC to hack software?

The short answer is no. In some instances it is helpful to have a genuine model of the hardware for which you're writing the software, such as when you're writing controller code for a specific device. For the most part, though, there's a great deal of fundamental building of concepts and skills that will keep you busy for a long time, using only general-purpose hardware, before you're likely to encounter a need for special hardware. You might enjoy having a look at rosettacode.org to get some general and specific ideas about programming.