Customer Reviews

The Mac Hacker's Handbook

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The Mac Hacker's Handbook is the best reference for Mac-specific attack information that I have found. At 368 pages, it may appear small compared to the typical 750+ page security tome. That's because the authors have done a near-perfect job of sticking to the topic at hand, the Mac. The authors do not succumb to the usual temptation to try and teach assembly language or reverse engineering. Rather, they do an excellent job touching on those topics in an OS X context, and assume the reader has a little background in that area already, or can otherwise keep up. I have done some limited research into the areas of Mac malware and process injection in the past. This book has done a fantastic job of filling in many holes in my knowledge that I hadn't been able to take care of before. Plus, it introduced me to a number of Mac-specific security features I wasn't aware of before. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Mac security.

The Mac Hacker's Handbook covers a lot of useful technical topics surrounding vulnerability analysis and exploit development for Mac OS X. That said, it doesn't so much teach you directly, as guide your learning. For example, it introduces the use of DTrace on OS X for dynamic analysis. It makes a very good case for DTrace's usefulness in reverse engineering, and for you to go out on your own and learn about it. Its DTrace examples aren't really freestanding, and require some background that you must get yourself. If the book were to give you the necessary background on every topic it introduces, it would be an enormous tome, and the authors probably would still be writing it.

Think of the book as explaining to you what all tools you need in your Mac hacking toolbox and why you need them, and how to put them together once you have them. It's up to you do go develop those skills on your own.

The biggest shortcoming of the book, however, is it is out of date. The concepts are sound and still very applicable, but the examples are written for OS X 10.5. Most do not work on Snow Leopard. Many you can get to work if you go out and beat the pavement trying to figure them out. I recommend this, but be aware, your progress through the book will be slow going as you get bogged down trying to figure out how to adapt each example so that it works.

This book succeeds if taken for what it is: a guide for your learning. You'll need to invest a fair amount of sweat equity to get the most out of it, though.

As a security professional Mac's are an interesting subject. They combine many of the best features from other operating systems into a wonderful package. I purchased a Macbook during a pen test about 8 months ago and have been in love with it since then. Before this book looking at security on Apple products was a difficult dive into the unknown. Charlie and Dino have done a lot of hard work and figured out the internals of OS X as related to security. They clearly present what's going inside the OS and how they learned the internals. This enables other security professionals to follow their method to both gain better understanding and to know what's wrong when something inevitably changes.

I'd definitely recommend this book for experienced security professionals looking to do exploit development on the Mac.

I really enjoyed this book, it teaches a number of techniques and does a great explaining the motivation behind an attack. I really enjoyed the chapters on dtrace and rootkits, as dtrace allowed me a quick way to peer inside what sys calls are made and the rootkits were discussed very well. While yes, a number of examples are out of date due to Snow Leopard, you can contact the authors, who are very friendly and happy to share some of their public slides, as well as trying to use the ideas to foster your own techniques.

Overall, a great book for anyone interested in hacking, Mac OS X, or both. Of course, if you're into iPhone hacking, this is a good place to start as well, and the authors know a thing or two there as well...

This book provides insight into many applications and internals of Apple's Mac operating system from a security perspective, which was exactly what I was looking for. A great read at home or on the plane, it keeps you interested with detailed accounts of bugs found on this platform. It goes into detail on how the vulnerabilities occur and even how to exploit them. The authors are world class guys. Highly recommended.

I have to disagree with the other reviewers of this book. The book seemed to be a jumbled collection of thoughts with only a very faint sense of direction. The book consist of a large number of code samples, but the explaination of these samples lacked.

The arena for Mac hacking books is relatively small. While I appreciate the effort to put together a basic understanding of the Mac attack surface, the manner in which this book does this seems less than cohesive. Admittedly I have not finished the entire book yet and that is largely due to the fact that reading the book more than a chapter at a time is tiresome.

I will give the authors credit for venturing into a new area of security research and hope that future books on the subject are easier to read. Not easier as in smaller words, but easier as in thought flow.

Well-written, readable, and fascinating, Charlie and Dino describe what goes on under the covers of Mac OS X, warts and all. They explain the obscure, badly-documented, and unsupported. Well worth reading for anyone who wants to know what's under the covers.