Hack Attacks Revealed: A Complete Reference for UNIX, Windows, and Linux with Custom Security Toolkit, Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: Author does not understand his subject
Review: This book has done nothing to dispell my theory that the information
content of a book is often inversely proportional to the number of pages
in the book. I'm 200 pages into it and that's as far as I'm
going to get. I expected some basic filler/theory in the first few
pages, but plowed on in the hopes that the author understood
the theory he was presenting and would use it later to explain security
exploits. However, I lost all confidence in the book when
I reached page 167, where the author demonstrates that he doesn't
understand ping and/or DNS. I don't bring this up to nitpick. I bring it up
because I think that anybody with pretensions to
being a security expert had better know the basics of how the
Internet works. How is anybody to make sense of, say, DNS spoofing,
without knowing how DNS works?

In case it's not obvious, the author confuses and muddles together
the actions of resolving a DNS domain name to an IP
address, and then using that IP address to send an ICMP echo
request to the destination. This may seem like a minor thing,
but its not just a typo (he makes the same mistake in three
different places on page 167), and security is a confusing
enough business without muddled descriptions like these.

On a more minor note, I do not see the point in filling page
after page with pretty pictures of the GUIs that hackers use
at their end. The publishers probably know better than I do
what sells today, but I don't understand why they and/or the
authors apparently feel that the thicker a book is, the better.

Rating:
Summary: More of an original than a second edition
Review: This book promises quite a bit in the new edition, let's see what's really in here. Okay, the chapter layout is completely different as the book starts with a Technology section, followed by Discovery, then Penetration, Vulnerabilities, and finally the Toolbox. The technology part is nicely abridged to about 87 pages. The Discovery part differs greatly in that the source code has been moved to the CD and the author added more coverage and examples plus some stealthier techniques and most recent SNMP, file sharing, DNS, NetBIOS, and CGI stuff. The ports and services are still there but I found them to be pretty handy references at any rate. Penetration contains updated material and it's nice to see IDS stuff in here too. The Vulnerabilities section is promising. There's an excellent chapter on the top 75 exploits that have certainly proven to be the most misuses of security weaknesses and the newer material makes it significant. The CD contains some of the same plus full licensed software, an updated repository and all the source code moved from the original text. All things considered, this book pans out to be more of an original than a second edition and well worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect All-in-one
Review: This new edition is jam-packed with tons of hacks I didn't know existed for UNIX, Linux, and Windows and all in one book! It's a pain and no small expense, to have to buy three separate books to get this cool stuff. Having it all in one place is fantastic.

Rating:
Summary: Chirillo Strikes Again, Part II
Review: Yet again, Mr. Chirillo strikes again with another fantastic book! You rarely find a book that provides coverage of the big three of Windows, Unix, and Linux. Hack Attacks Revealed's information provide you with everything you would need to test and attempt to secure a computer system or network. As a bonus, the fully licensed TigerSuite Professional (version 3.5) is included on the accompanying CD. The thing about this book is that the information included works! You can read other books on the subject, try out the techniques and come away wondering what is going on, and why did this not work like it said it would.

What sets this book apart is the Crash Course in C Programming...this book is just fantastic...highly recommended.