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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Big Names, Great Book, April 27, 2002
When I read the first edition of this book, was truly disappointed. I was wondering how such people could have written such book. Not that the book was worthless, but too 'standard' to met the expectations I had from these guys. Still the idea was very interesting (information directly from the real experts), and I kept waiting for a new edition. Well the second edition is now out, and not only fulfills, but exceeds all my original expectations !!Let's take a look: The Approach: Understanding attacks and vulnerabilities, by understanding 'how to hack' (good hacking of course. . . .ahem ) The Book: Rewritten, expanded and improved, the book consists of 800+ pages well structured into 18 chapters (against 450+ pages and 15 chapters of the first edition). Well written, well presented, with a real fancy table of contents, the chapters include url's, a FAQ section and a SOLUTIONS FAST TRACK one. A lot of CLEVER code is included as well as helpful 'Tool & Traps' and 'Notes from the Underground. . . ' outlines. The new sections (all outstanding) include: - Hardware Hacking (otherwise only found in papers) - Tunneling (excellent) - IDS evasion (very easily explained) - Format strings attacks The Intended Audience: People willing to become network security pros. Contents: - Introduction to Security, Attacks and related Methodologies. - Cryptography. - Unexpected Input, Buffer Overflow, Format Strings. - Sniffing, Hijacking and Spoofing. - Tunneling, Hardware Hacking, Viruses (et al.). - IDS Evasion. - Automated Tools. - Reporting Security Problems. The Bottom Line: It is not just a good book, it is the best book among high level network security books, and the only that compares with specialized papers. Only quite easier. I got more than 60 papers on buffer overflows. None compares with the classical 'Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit' by Aleph One. IMHO, however, the corresponding chapter from this book, does compare and is really easier to understand. Finally, the 'piece de resistance' of the book, is the chapter about Spoofing. Really enjoyed it, and by the way got surprised reading the innovative (to me) technique to 'Spoof Connectivity Through Asymmetric Firewalls'. Good Job Dan ;-) As an added bonus, as an owner of this book, you'll find a lot of code files, applications and links...
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