Contents Second edition of books I like are always welcome - and this book is no exception. So I was very happy when I was provided a review copy from the publisher.
I really liked the first edition of this book and consider this follow up an essential book for IT-security consultants and other professionals.
The book is comprised of five parts which each give an overview of important subjects for professional IT-security consultants. Within these five parts are 21 chapters which are mostly around 20 pages, making it possible for busy professionals to digest a chapter while performing the usual projects and everyday work.
The five parts are: I) introduction to ethical disclosure, including legal system in the US II) penetration testing tools: metasploit and backtrack III) exploits 101 with everything from basic programming skills to writing shellcode, but only on Linux and Microsoft Windows. IV) Vulnerability analysis which is a strong part about static analysis, reverse engineering, fuzzing, writing real life exploits and references to the essential tools used for these purposes V) Malware analysis is saved for last and includes the finishing touch to why IT-security professionals should care about all the rest of the book
The great thing about this book are that non-programmers are presented with enough materials to get started in finding and developing exploits. This was also the reason why it took so long to do this review. Each time I read a chapter I was itching to get started running the examples and trying the techniques.
Since this book tries to cover a lot of materials they have decided to include references. There are a lot of specific references to full-length articles covering each of the specialized techniques described in the examples. This really works out great, since I can skip the articles I already have read - but get some in-depth materials to complement the book.
As you can probably understand this way of building the book makes it very efficient and much to my liking, I can decide where to go next. The reader can also decide to skip a chapter and enough references to other chapters are provided that I will never get lost. The small price to pay are a few lines repeated in two chapters.
The writing style and the edge of the book is presented with authority and the authors have done a superb job of making this book consistent. The book is written by 4 authors, but except for a few places were they hint to the author of a chapter there are no clues to who wrote what part. The book is overall high quality and I have only discovered two small wording errors.
I have not discovered any problems in the materials presented and was in general amazed by the updates done. As an example they use Vista for some of the Microsoft Windows examples and in other parts they reference articles and techniques that are up to date. When second edition of a book is published the fear is always that only the new chapters are updated, but it seems the book was updated in all chapters.
Some bad things, which are not really that bad are. I would expect more script-languages but for some reason a lot of examples are using C programs for exploits. I personally use Perl for developing scripted exploits, and the book does use that - but in odd places they use C programs.
This is not really wrong, but it feels a bit old'ish. To be fair in some cases the C programs are needed and since the programs that are to be exploited are also C programs, it works out.
The worst thing I can say about the book is that the index is kind of weak. I know specific things are included in the book, but they are nowhere to be found in the index. That does make the book less useful. Others would also think that a book like this should include a CD/DVD - but since everyone can download the tools I would recommended not adding a CD/DVD for the third edition, but use more resources expanding and adding more chapters instead :-)
Target audience This book is for anyone interested in getting into hacking and developing exploits. While the primary target audience are security professionals I would recommend that some parts are copied and put on the desk of your manager - they really need information about risk, ethical hacking and legal aspects.
Conclusion As I started out I welcome second editions, and I had high expectations when receiving this book.
I am happy to report that I was satisfied with the results, and even though I got to go through stuff again I was delighted to relearn a lot which I had forgot. Having an updated concise book about exploits with a great number of references written in an easy to follow language is high value for me.
I would suggest that IT-security consulting companies include this book in the welcome package for any new employee who is doing consulting in IT-security - along with a BackTrack CD, laptop, mobile phone and the usual other stuff.
One word of warning, if you own ALL the more specialized books about exploits, shellcode, secure coding, reverse engineering, fuzzing etc. you may want to skip this book. On the other hand you might own all these books, but never found the time to read them cover to cover, then you should read this book :-)
Links: The home page for this book is: http://www.grayhathackingbook.com
A sample chapter about metasploit is also available on the book website.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
