The Shellcoder's Handbook: Discovering and Exploiting Security Holes [Paperback]

Jack Koziol (Author), David Litchfield (Author), Dave Aitel (Author), Chris Anley (Author), Sinan "noir" Eren (Author), Neel Mehta (Author), Riley Hassell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0764544683 | ISBN-13: 978-0764544682 | Edition: 1

• Examines where security holes come from, how to discover them, how hackers exploit them and take control of systems on a daily basis, and most importantly, how to close these security holes so they never occur again
• A unique author team-a blend of industry and underground experts- explain the techniques that readers can use to uncover security holes in any software or operating system
• Shows how to pinpoint vulnerabilities in popular operating systems (including Windows, Linux, and Solaris) and applications (including MS SQL Server and Oracle databases)
• Details how to deal with discovered vulnerabilities, sharing some previously unpublished advanced exploits and techniques

Editorial Reviews

Review

essential for administrators who want to secure computer systems under their management& -- Computer Weekly, March 2004

“…80%…anyone developing their own software may be surprised by how easily flaws can be exploited and fixed…” (PC Utilities, July 2004)

“…essential for administrators who want to secure computer systems under their management…” (Computer Weekly, March 2004)

"...has caused some raised eyebrows in the technical community..." (www.infoworld.com, 17 March 2004)

From the Back Cover

Uncover, exploit, and close security holes in any software or operating system

Every day, patches are created to cover up security holes in software applications and operating systems. But by the time you download a patch, it could be too late. A hacker may have already taken advantage of the hole and wreaked havoc on your system. This innovative book will help you stay one step ahead. It gives you the tools to discover vulnerabilities in C-language-based software, exploit the vulnerabilities you find, and prevent new security holes from occurring.

The Shellcoder’s Handbook is written by a unique author team, consisting of "white hat" corporate security experts and underground hacker-cracker types, who are the most respected contributors to Bugtraq, a vulnerability tracking mailing list. They take you from introductory-level exploitation and exposing vulnerabilities in binaries to advanced content on kernel overflows. In addition, they provide you with advanced techniques to close new security holes that are not yet known to the public but could cause devastating consequences. With all this information, you'll be able to develop your own discovery process and quickly determine whether a security hole is truly exploitable. The methods discussed will also dramatically improve your penetration testing skills in order to achieve a "100% Penetration Rate Guaranteed."

The Shellcoder's Handbook shows you how to:

• Find out where security holes come from and how to close them so they never occur again
• Pinpoint vulnerabilities in popular operating systems (including Windows^®, Linux^®, and Solaris^TM) and applications (including MS SQL Server and Oracle^® databases)
• Write exploits for use with filters and hack closed source systems to understand what countermeasures need to be taken
• Deal with discovered vulnerabilities using previously unpublished advanced exploits and techniques

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 644 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (April 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764544683
• ISBN-13: 978-0764544682
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #744,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

94 of 96 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent material, but... May 11, 2004

By Omar A. Herrera Reyna

Format:Paperback

Not for beginners as others have previously stated, you require deep knowledge of C, assembler and IA32 architecture as well as some knowledge of the Linux and Windows operating systems. If you have this then it will suffice (Even if you have not ever heard of a buffer overflow before).

What amazes me, and the reason of me not giving five stars to the book, is the enormous amount of errors in the book (no one else has talked about this on previous reviews). These go from forgetting to include memory allocation routines in some sample code and putting incorrect labels in some diagrams to talking about certain parts of code while actually showing completely different lines of code or talking about different addresses in the explanations from the ones on the sample code and program output that they talk about.

For example, on page 90 the authors wrote:

" Let's take a look at two assembly instructions that correspond to the free() routine finding the previous chunk

0x42073ff8 <_int_free+136>: mov 0xfffffff8 (%edx),%eax
0x42073ffb <_int_free+139>: sub %eax,%esi

In the first instruction (mov 0x8 (%esi), %edx), %edx is 0x80499b8, the address of..."

The instruction being referred to at the last sentence should be "mov 0xfffffff8 (%edx),%eax". "mov 0x8 (%esi), %edx" appears many lines below this paragraph, in another code sample, and it is completely unrelated to the explanation given there.

Of course, people familiar with these topics who also have a deep knowledge of the required programming languages and architectures will catch these flaws easily. The problem is that there are so many of them that it gets annoying at some point and you end asking yourself why do the editorial reviewers didn't do their job properly....

Also, I bought this book almost as soon as it went out for sale, yet as of this date (may 2004), the only material found in the web page of the book is the source code to most of the examples. Definitely much less compared to all the material that the authors promised in the book to be there (so don't expect to find more than this).

It is an excellent reference book though, and if you take the time to read the book thoroughly and make notes to fix the errors in the book you will find that even this activity is rewarding. Some might even argue that the authors put the errors there on purpose to keep script kiddies away from this knowledge, but I don't think that would be OK with a book like this which has created so much expectation. Hopefully the next edition will have all this fixed. Read more ›

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing April 8, 2004

By Elijah D

Format:Paperback

I've always been facinated by the amount of work security researchers put into finding vulnerabilities. This is a very good book on software vulnerabilities. It's also very current as it examines a number of the recently widely publicized vulnerabilities. It also rightly points out the fact that Linux/Unix are not as secure as a lot of people out there would like the public to believe.

The ways to get around stack protection outlined in this book was an eye opener for me.

I thought I had very good knowledge of the material the book covers until I actually read it. It is clear that as software shops continue to plug vulnerabilties, people will continue to find new ways to exploit software.

Clearly, this book is not for the casual reader. This is essentially a book for people who have above average assembly language and c/c++ skills.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent security book although misleading title May 21, 2004

By AdV

Format:Paperback

The title "Shellcoder's handbook" made me reluctant to even buy this book. I thought it would go about explaining exploiting stack, heap overruns, bypassing memory exploitation methods and so on in order to execute shell code: basically, a book for hacking and I didn't like that. Nonetheless, it took me a glance of the list of authors and the table of contents to realize that this book goes beyond exploitation and into core penetration testing and vulnerability discovery methods. Hopefully, like rational and ethical software security engineers will do, this book will be used more for vulnerability discovery and benign exploitation rather than malicious exploitation.

Parts 1 and 2 are a great introduction of OS internal, system calls, memory management, and in-depth analysis of security bug exploitation; thus making them relevant for part 3: "Vulnerability Discovery". Part 3 goes into great depth on how discover security bugs. No so often do we have the brightest minds in the art of software vulnerability discovery, penetration testing, or "ethical hacking" joining forces. The variety of ways to discover security bugs is what we need to learn in order to ship secure software or to successfully secure existing software applications. Great Job!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Koziol is great. September 6, 2005

By Austin Seipp

Format:Paperback

This book is absolutely excellent. One of the best, if not the best security book I have ever read.

As previously stated numerous times, it will require you have Assembly and C knowledge. If you don't know either one the book will move lightning fast and you will probably not have the ability to keep up. If you do know both, you should be able to take the book at a nice and steady speed.

Aside from difficulty, the rumors that it contains syntax errors ARE true. There are a few little errors in places like this (showing a typical off-by-one error to prove that C doesn't check boundries on arrays):

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {

int array[5] = {1,2,3,4,5};

printf("%d",array[5];

}

While these errors ARE numerous and slightly annoying, the important thing to understand is that you get the general concepts they are trying to teach you. Anybody can fix the syntax to work correctly but if they don't know the logic behind the syntax it's no different than a car mechanic trying to fix a F-16 jet.

I am willing to overlook the syntax and lexical errors that appear in this book and give it a 5/5. I may be too light, but I think it's an absolutely essential book that everybody should read.

If you find yourself wanting to get a book, whether it be Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering, Rootkits: subverting the Windows kernel, or The Art of Computer Virus Research and Defense, while all excellent books (which I highly recommend you all read if this book interests you), if you have the ability to get The Shellcoders Handbook: Discovering and Exploiting Security Holes, you should.