Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

If you are a programmer who wants to learn about hacking and cracking techniques this book is great! Code examples are easy to follow and intuitive, be aware though, this book is strongly aimed at open source operating systems, not windows. I personally found it a bit of a shame that the section on networking wasn't as detailed and big as that of software exploits on stand alone machines.

This book is a definate must buy and I will be referring to it's principles for a long time to come.

Dont Bother Unless You Have Linux Installed (10/21 people found this helpful)

Hmmmm, I sometimes wonder whether these so called "Reviews" are actually written by the general public or people working for the book's publishing company! Lets get one thing straight regarding this book, to 'use' it you HAVE to have Linux installed (something I've never seen mentioned) and you need to be pretty proficient with the C programming language. Yes, the book briefly describes (one page) the concept of programming in general, but then moves on at such a pace that a novice would be completley lost a few pages later. Ok granted, not many non-programmers would probably even look at this book, but potential buyers need to be aware of the expectations on the reader.

As a programmer myself of 12 years, I feel that potential buyers who are not very experienced would be well advised to save their money.

Best book on the subject full stop! (1/9 people found this helpful)

To put it in plain English; The rest are crap and this is the best!
I looked at the rest out and they are just script kiddy books every one apart from this one. Unless you are a sad little script kiddy that whant's to crack not hack into a system... and you wan't to lean about hacking not cracking then this is the best book to buy by miles!
Can't recomend more and wish that others would follow and make books like this fine bit of work ;)
Best Regards and hope this helpted in your chosce and sorry about the spelling,
Edward.

The Definitive Computer Security Handbook! (5/5 people found this helpful)

I consider this book to be excellent. It is a "must read" if you really want a thorough grasp of the priciples behind computer security. It concisely explains the techniques of exploitation, aided by clear code examples. You will benefit most from this book if you start with a basic background knowledge of C programming, shell scripting and networking.

Good Introduction (15/16 people found this helpful)

This book gives a good introduction to general security concepts.
it starts off with some common programming exploits (eg buffer overflows) and explains how they work and shows you how to execute them. This section of the book is good, although i found the need for other material to expand on what i learned here. For example aleph1's excellent tutorial Smash the Stack is a good way to supplement this. Other programming exploits explained are heap overflows, format strings and returning into libc. These are all well explained introductions, but to gain a deeper understanding it is necessary to do some more research.

There is also a good section on writing your own shellcode. Some assembly language experience is useful here and generally it is well explained and set out.

The section on network attacks is also a very good although at times it seems like he is only explaining how to use existing tools and doesn't go into the theory behind them enough, but having said that it is an excellent introduction. Topics covered here include: packet sniffing, DOS attacks, port scanning and TCP/IP hijacking.

The final section on encryption offers some good theoretical knowledge on general encryption concepts but lacks a little on the practical implications of this. However if you are really into encryption you will want to get a dedicated book on it. In the meantime this definatly severs as a good introduction.

With the nature of the topics covered the best way i found to learn was to read over a section and experiment with it. You can only learn so much from a book, but this book will give you a good knowledge base to start from. A decent knowledge of C is assumed, some assembly knowledge would be helpful but isn't strictly necessary.

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

Jon Erickson

Reader Reviews:

Brilliant! (1/1 people found this helpful)

Dont Bother Unless You Have Linux Installed (10/21 people found this helpful)

Best book on the subject full stop! (1/9 people found this helpful)

The Definitive Computer Security Handbook! (5/5 people found this helpful)

Good Introduction (15/16 people found this helpful)

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