Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition

A hacking book that teaches you mindset

I've read quite a few books on hacking, many of which focus on specific technologies—such as using tools to perform reconnaissance on websites and identify potential attack targets. This book, however, takes a different approach. It starts by teaching the fundamentals of assembly and C programming, then moves on to help you identify programs vulnerable to buffer overflows. You'll learn how to write shellcode to exploit these vulnerabilities. What sets this book apart is its minimal reliance on abstractions. For instance, it teaches you how to build your own simple web server, which you can then exploit. Need to perform a SYN flood against a target? No problem—you'll write your own in C to fully understand the process. This hands-on approach will give you a solid understanding of networking. There's even a chapter dedicated to cryptography, which will deepen your knowledge in this critical area. To top it off, the book culminates in a project where you'll learn to crack WEP encryption—not with third-party tools, but by exploiting weak initialization vectors (IVs) and doing it all yourself. While some of the examples, such as the buffer overflow scenarios, may not work in real-world environments, this book is still an invaluable resource. It covers essential foundational knowledge that will serve you well on your hacking journey. There are books that quickly get outdated because they teach you how to use tools. This book is a classic. It teaches you understanding. After reading this, you’ll have a better understanding of how third-party tools work, or you can write your own! Read more