Gray Hat Hacking The Ethical Hackers Handbook, 3rd Edition Review

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Gray Hat Hacking The Ethical Hackers Handbook, 3rd Edition ReviewCritical reviews are my least favorite aspect of my Amazon experience, but I believe readers expect me to be honest with them. Gray Hat Hacking, 3rd Ed (GHH3E) has a lot of potential, but it needs a reboot and a ruthless editor. I read and reviewed the original edition 6 1/2 years ago but skipped the 2nd Ed. This 3rd Ed (published in Jan 2011) features several exceptionally talented authors (such as Allen Harper and Chris Eagle), so my expectations remained high. Unfortunately, after finishing the book I had collected a pile of notes that I will try to transform into constructive commentary for a 4th Ed, which I would enjoy seeing!
The GHH team needs to revisit first principles and decide just what it is trying to accomplish. I recommend the authors ditch the first three chapters, or radically concentrate on the ethical disclosure debate. The rest of the so-called legal material reads like a brain dump, almost like a blog post that never finishes. In some cases the authors of the sections stray from their topic, such as the "Vendors Paying More Attention" section on p 71. Cut it out! Be ruthless! Similarly, the section on social engineering (ch 4) needs a major overhaul if it is to survive into the next edition.
Other chapters have issues. Ch 7, on BackTrack, is basically just installation instructions. Ch 17 only devotes 17 pages to Web app security; either remove it or add substantially to the material. Ch 18 is supposed to be about VoIP, but it's mainly a discussion of the VoIPER tool. Ch 19 is supposed to be about SCADA attacks, but it's really just talk of the Autodafe and TFTPFuzz tools. In ch 28, the author doesn't explain how Nepenthes acquires a malware sample, besides letting it run on a cable network for a few weeks. Having deployed Nepenthes I know how it works, but I expect a reader who wants to learn about Nepenthes would want to understand it based on the text he or she bought.
The organization of the book needs an overhaul too. It seems to promote a progress of less complicated to more complicated, but at this point it needs to be reconstructed in a fourth edition. Why does Part IV, Vulnerability Analysis, follow Part III, Exploiting? Doesn't exploiting require doing vulnerability analysis? In other cases, material seems redundant. Ch 28 and ch 29 cover similar material but are likely by different authors; I recommend combining them and dropping duplicate material.
For me, some of the chapters are on the right track and could lead the fourth edition to a more solid foundation. I recommend expanding Ch 16 (featuring nice coverage of a .pdf exploit). I would really like to see a chapter or more on Javascript for malicious purposes. Overall, I think the GHH team could be very successful if they looked for topics not covered in other books, and addressed those issues in GHH4E. Why try to summarize coding in C, assembly, Python, etc., into a chapter, when other subjects (like Javascript for the hacker/analyst) aren't really explained in any other book? Similarly, it's probably not necessary to cover social engineering, BackTrack, or Metasploit now that individual books are devoted to those concepts.
There's a lot of good technical information in GHH3E, but I don't see myself recommending it to analysts in a CIRT or similar group. I think if the book rebooted with a focus on specialized material not found elsewhere, leveraging the talents of people like Harper and Allen, GHH4E would be THE book to buy on those topics.Gray Hat Hacking The Ethical Hackers Handbook, 3rd Edition Overview

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Malware Analyst's Cookbook and DVD: Tools and Techniques for Fighting Malicious Code Review

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Malware Analyst's Cookbook and DVD: Tools and Techniques for Fighting Malicious Code ReviewI have just received this book and have not yet worked my way through all the chapters, but I have reviewed the contents and tool DVD. I teach college classes on Network and Computer forensics from a survey level through a hard-core programming level. I have likely purchased or been sent most of the books in this area, and this book does stand out for the following reasons.
1. The material is up-to-date. Tools and malware resources change on an almost daily basis and you need to get books that reflect current resources and best practices. This book does a very good job covering the current tools and resources. It provides the web addresses for the various tools and resources discussed in each chapter. It also refers to current research, articles, and conference material in the areas covered in the chapters.
2. The topics covered are comprehensive. The book includes topics on anonymizing (the first chapter), classifying malware, shellcode, DLL code injection, debugging, how to safely run malware in a virtual environment, dumping memory and memory forensics, debugging kernel code, etc. The topics are collected into 18 chapters and are very complete.
3. The focus of this book is performing analysis of malware (which includes a wide variety of exploit types) and creating/using the tools to perform this analysis. Numerous examples are given showing how the analysis can be done, and some background information is presented as needed.
4. The book assumes the reader has brains. Too many "Computer Forensics" books are a waste of time for someone that already has a background in programming, networking, etc. They (the other Forensics books) often start their discussion of Network Forensics with a definition of what a network is ("A network sends packets between computers..."). Give me a break. This book assumes the reader already has a level of knowledge that is appropriate to anyone really working in this field. However, the authors do a good job explaining what needs to be explained in the course of presenting the topics. They don't talk down to the reader.
5. The book has a wealth of examples. Each chapter presents the topics by showing examples as well as showing how to get and install the necessary tools.
6. The book balances using pre-written tools with create-your-own tools. The latter include scripts in Python and programs in C/C++. The authors indicate where to get various relevant libraries which can be used to create or customize tools. This book is not just a collection of tools, but shows how to use the tools, analysis techniques, etc.
7. The book is very reasonably priced for the quality of content and the extra DVD. The price from Amazon is under $40 and the retail price is about $60. However, even at $60 this book is a bargain. Even if you just used the web addresses for the lists of tools presented in each chapter, the amount of time would take to locate and document the huge number of forensics/hacking tools presented in this book, is worth more than the book's price.
8. The book presents a huge amount of material. Almost every page is crammed with information and examples. Frankly, this book presents more information in one chapter than most other books do in their entirety, and this book has 18 chapters. The chapters are written so they are independent of each other and you can select the chapter you want to work through without reading previous chapters.
9. The tool focus is open-source and platform independent. The authors stay with open-source tools and try to reference tools that can run on both Linux and Windows. However, they also use the best tools available for a specific task, even if the tool only runs under Linux or only under Windows.
Reader Background:
There are enough varied topics in this book that readers with different levels of knowledge can benefit. The authors assume the reader has a background in basic networking, understands operating systems (both Windows and Unix), understands programming (Python, C/C++, Assembly), and understand processor basics (registers, the stack, etc). However, these assumptions are not barriers to getting something out of this book. Beginners will find the book too difficult, but would profit by just downloading the various tools referenced in the chapters.
Bottom line:
* If you are doing forensic analysis on Malware you should purchase this book (for the chapters on debugging, memory forensics, and malware forensics)
* If you are working in the network/computer security area you should purchase this book (for the chapters on setting up a malware lab, classifying malware, and setting up a malware sandbox)
* If you are interested in the programming aspects of malware you should purchase this book (for the chapters on DLLs and debugging malware code and on code injection)
* If (and I hesitate to include this) you want to be a hacker you should purchase this book and read the entire thing.
Malware Analyst's Cookbook and DVD: Tools and Techniques for Fighting Malicious Code Overview

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