Product Description: Get in-depth coverage of Web application platforms and their vulnerabilities, presented the same popular format as the international bestseller, Hacking Exposed. Covering hacking scenarios across different programming languages and depicting various types of attacks and countermeasures, this book offers you up-to-date and highly valuable insight into Web application security.
"Required reading for Web architects and operators." -- Erik Olson, Microsoft Program Manager, Security, ASP.NET
"Just as the original Hacking Exposed revealed the techniques the bad guys were hiding behind, Hacking Exposed Web Applications will do the same for this critical technology. Its methodical approach and appropriate detail will enlighten, educate, and go a long way toward making the Web a safer place in which to do business." -- from the Foreword by Mark Curphey, Chair of the Open Web Application Security Project
"This is a serious technical guide that is also great reading -- scary enough to motivate folks to take Web security seriously but approachable enough to be an effective learning tool. Required reading for Web architects and operators." -- Erik Olson, Program Manager, Security, ASP.NET
"What better way to defend against hackers than to understand the tools and techniques that are used to penetrate your site? Hacking Exposed Web Applications offers a detailed look at common vulnerabilities within your applications and explains how to protect yourself from them." -- Mike Mullins, Ecommerce Security Engineer for a leading specialty apparel retailer
"At last, your personal guide to preventing the next generation of security threats. This book explains in intricate detail how you can do everything right when it comes to network security and still be owned at the Web application layer." -- Chip Andrews, www.sqlsecurity.com
"If you're involved in writing Web-based applications using ASP/ASP.NET, Java, JSP, PHP, or other languages, the Hacking Exposed series is something you DEFINITELY need to read. Before writing one line of code, this book will spark ideas about how to design and secure your Web applications. There are techniques potential hackers could use that I've never even thought of! Great resource!" -- Steve Schofield, Creator and Managing Editor, ASPFree.com
Hacking exposed: excellent books This is a general comment regarding Hacking Exposed series. I owned Hacking Exposed (first edition) and then I moved to the more specific Hacking Exposed books, so now I've got Hacking Linux Exposed, Hacking Windows 2000 Exposed and hacking web Applications exposed. All those books absolutely worth it, do not hesitate to buy any of them.
A must read, even in 2005/2006+ Covers XSS (Cross-Site Scripting), SQL Injection hacks, and a bunch more!
PROS: Doesn't get deep into code, but shows all the ways that people will peek and poke in your web apps. Covers IIS, Apache, ASP, PHP, CGI, and some CMS systems I've never heard about but Enterprise level teams may use.
CON: The book is probably due for a second edition, only because it's a couple years old - but all info/issues/hacks are still issues today!
Excellent Addition to Hacking Exposed Series Companies go to great lengths to segregate their internal networks from the rest of the world. They implement firewalls and DMZ's to protect their computer systems from the malicious code flying about the public Internet. For the most part, companies can simply block incoming traffic from getting through to their network at all from the outside world. However, in order to host a web site the web server must be accessible from the public Internet. That means that the web server offers an inroad to the internal network if not configured properly.
Hacking Exposed- Web Applications: Web Application Security Secrets & Solutions by Joel Scambray and Mike Shema will show you what you need to know to protect your web servers. The authors explain how an attacker gathers information to identify target systems and seek out the vulnerabilities they can exploit to break in. They go into great detail to discuss the myriad of vulnerabilities on various platforms such as Apache, IIS, J2EE and more.
This book will help you understand just how much risk your web servers are exposed to- vulnerabilities within XML, cross-site scripting and other input validation attacks, SQL injection attacks and more. Thankfully, the authors go on to provide valuable information for how to guard against these attacks and ways to harden your web servers to protect them.
Anyone who administers a web server or develops web applications should read this book to understand the pitfalls and how to avoid them.
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The best web hacking book today I just finished reading Hacking Exposed Web Apps and was coming back to Amazon to fwd the recommendation to a friend who is a CSO at a Fortune 500 firm when I stumbled upon the review from hermie. I have to say that I disagree completely with hermie's assessment, and felt compelled enough to say so in print! First of all, the book does cover a number of web platforms besides IIS -- it's the only one I've seen that talks about web services in any detail (SOAP, UDDI, XML, etc.), and it also devotes entire chapters to both web app management and web client hacking as well (very salient but often overlooked topics in other books). Main author Scambray may be a Windows security expert, but the non-Windows expertise is very visible in the appendix on libwhisker and the chapters on surveying the app, attacking session state, and input validation, etc. This also calls into question the criticisms by hermie of the specific detail versus the depiction of broad concepts -- if you are after ancient security concepts, then you plainly shouldn't be reading the Hacking Exposed series! That's the point of each book in the series -- use fresh, relevant technical details on how to hack to illustrate cutting-edge *concepts* in computer and Internet security. I think hermie really missed the boat here. Finally, the straw that broke the camels back for me was the comparison to "Web Hacking" by McClure. McClure is an executive now running his own start-up, and the knock that I've heard on this book is that it is really non-technical and out-of-date in sections. McClure brought in strong contributors to drive the details, but apparently couldn't glue the right pieces together to make this book competitive. I have a borrowed copy on my shelf, but frankly could not get past the first three or so chapters. Sigh -- I guess that's the breaks when anyone can post their thoughts here in the review section :)
A decent introduction, but incomplete I must admit, I was disappointed with Hacking Exposed Web Applications (HE:WA, as another reviewer called it). Overall, I thought it was basically mediocre.
My main fault with the book was that it was incomplete; equal and fair coverage was not given where it should be. For example, Chapter 9 "Attacking Web Datastores" should have been called "Attacking Microsoft SQL Server." While some of the general techniques (i.e. SQL injection attacks) in Chapter 9 could have been applied to any SQL RDBMS, much of it was very specific to a Windows/IIS/ASP/MSSQL setup. This doesn't help me much to write my bread-and-butter Unix/Apache/Perl/PostgreSQL or even Java/Oracle apps any better.
It seems like the authors wrote their book to be "Hacking IIS Web Applications Exposed" and at the last minute decided to throw in some Apache and Unix here and there, with a sprinkling of Cold Fusion and Netscape Enterprise, to market the book more broadly. If they had just stuck within their expertise (Joel Scambray wrote for Microsoft TechNet's ironically-titled "Ask Us About... Security" column and wrote "Hacking Windows 2000 Exposed") and produced their original book, I think they'd of come up with a better product.
Another problem I have with HE:WA (and the whole HE series) is that they spend too much time on specific attacks and not enough time on the broader security concepts. For example, how useful is the first HE book today? How useful with HE:WA be in three years? I still recommend "Computer Security Basics" to anybody beginning in the security arena, and that book was published over a dozen years ago. CSB remains in print today because it teaches sound pragmatic security concepts that remain relevant today.
I will say, however, that HE:WA does do a better job than some of the other HE books about reinforcing broad concepts (like Input Validation) across all platforms and languages. I still do not feel they teach pragmatic security for web app development though, and it's being pragmatic that will save you from tomorrow's attack. (You've got to distrust your OS, double-check whatever your webserver says, hate your database, and ALWAYS validate your input and you'll be immune to almost all vulnerabilities discussed in HE:WA ).
Despite all the problems I have mentioned, this remains an okay book for a novice web developer looking to learn security, especially those of the One-True-Microsoft-Way persuasion. If you're looking for an alternative, I'm half way through "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" (co-authored by Hacking Exposed lead author Stuart McClure) on Safari. I like it better than HE:WA so far, and it seems to be fairly comparable on the target audience and topics covered (and it actually covers them!) I would give it a 4/5 or a 5/5 based on what I've read.
In conclusion, if you can only by one book on Web Application security, don't get this one. Otherwise, it is at least worth a skim and a spot on the bookshelf.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
