Hacking: The Next Generation

Good read. Very informative, not your average hack tome. Very informative, disects and discusses the new "hacks" with readable and understandable examples. Very useful to gain some insight into what is happening now.

If you are a technical person with any interest in security this is a great overview of the current playing/minefield, chances are you'll learn something.

An intriguing new world (1/1 people found this helpful)

The next generation of hackers will not simply port-scan your network and plan an attack on an unpatched machine. They will be far more sophisticated. They will target individuals, extract details from social network profiles, and manipulate communications to convince your colleagues to reveal sensitive corporate information. This is essentially what this book is about: the set of modern tools and tactics to focus on advanced reconnaissance approaches to using cross-site scripting for stealing sessions.

The authors present this fascinating new world of hackers, and explain how they use web 2.0 to their advantage. While the title of the book is more general, the content is far more focused on the social engineering aspects of hacking.

Chapter 1 sets the scene by delving into various reconnaissance techniques, with a focus on social networks and modern web services. Rarely is the first chapter of a book so revealing of what is to follow in subsequent chapters. From dumpster-diving to overhearing conversations, from Google Earth to web searching, from Facebook to Twitter, and from email harvesting to job postings. It has it all to tempt the reader into this intriguing world of hacking.

The following three chapters present a technical journey into various recent techniques to compromise web and other services. While some of the ideas on cross-site aspects are interesting, some others (such as ARP poisoning) are already much-trodden.

Chapter 7 was most interesting. Phishing is an understudied phenomena, and the attention paid to it in this book is much deserved. The last three chapters focus on social networks, and delve into the specifics of hypothetical attack scenarios. Some themes are repetitive and lose sight of reality.

The book targets an audience just short of intermediate, and rightly so. While some of the case studies and attack implementations are insightful, this book offers relatively little else new. The language used is very accessible, however, and the references to tools and web links are very useful. With a little over 200 pages of text, this book makes reading a joy on the particular topic. It is recommended for audiences with a little technical know-how and interest.

Nitesh Dhanjani, Billy Rios, Brett Hardin

Reader Reviews:

Very Informative (0/0 people found this helpful)

An intriguing new world (1/1 people found this helpful)

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