Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, Volume 1 Review

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Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, Volume 1 ReviewWhile Google is a researcher's friend, it is a hacker's dream. The subtitle of Google Hacking for Penetration Testers is "Explore the Dark Side of Googling". The dark side of Google is that far too many networks are insecure with inadequate security and enable unauthorized information to leak into Google. This leakage creates the situation where significant amounts of password files, confidential information, and configuration data and much more are easily available.
After reading Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, the real power and potential danger of Google is easily understood. Author Johnny Long details how penetration testers can harvest information that has been crawled by Google. The need for Google to be an integral part of any penetration test is now easily understood.
In a similar manner, when Dan Farmer wrote SATAN in 1995, it was met with significant consternation in that many felt he was wrong to release such a powerful program into the wild. Silicon Graphics, his employer at the time, considered his conduct unprofessional and summarily fired him. Ironically, in 2005, a security administrator can be fired if they don't run a vulnerability scanner akin to SATAN. Running scanning tools is now part of security due diligence and any administrator not running such a tool is careless.
With that, some may think author Johnny Long gives far too much ammunition to those seeking to peruse corporate data, but those were the same mistaken objections to SATAN. The book is not meant to be a crutch for script kiddies, its aim is rather to show how Google can be used to uncover data that most companies would rather remain secured. It is simply a matter of time until such Google searches will be considered due diligence for any basic security endeavor.
The book's 12 chapters show how one can plunder and pillage corporate data via Google. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a basic introduction to Google searching, including building Google queries, URL and operator syntax, search reduction, and more.
Chapters 3 through 10 detail the internals of Google hacking. The avenues of attack are nearly endless and various methods are detailed from traversal techniques, site crawling, tracking down Web server logins, and much more. With the sheer amount of data produced on corporate Web sites, it is hard not to have information leakage. The problem is that Google is the perfect glue to bond those disparate pieces of data together to form a dangerous set of connected data. Google is now gluing isolated data, which is dangerous data when in the wrong hands.
Chapter 11 details what can be done to protect an organization from Google hackers. While author Johnny Long may be a hacker, he is quite mainstream when he writes that the best hardware and software configuration money can buy can't protect computing resources if an effective security policy is not in place. Long observes that a good security policy, when properly enforced, outlines the assets the organization is trying to protect, how the protection mechanisms are installed, the acceptable level of operational risk, and what do to in the event of a compromise or disaster.
Chapter 11 details the use of the robots.txt file, which can be used to block Web crawlers such as Google. The chapter also recommends the use of various tools to secure an internal Web site. Tools from Foundstone are detailed, in addition to Gooscan, a tool created by Long that enables bulk Google searches to determine how much information has leaked.
A decade ago, Google was the type of powerful search tool that was rumored to be used within the NSA. Today, petabytes of data are only a few clicks away on Google, and with the Google API, all of that information can be seamlessly integrated into a few scripts. The challenge companies face is to take security seriously and stop making it easy for their password files, payroll data, and other confidential information to be entered into Google's server farm.
Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, Volume 1 Overview

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Google Hacking for Penetration Testers Review

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Google Hacking for Penetration Testers ReviewThis review mainly focuses on evaluating how valuable is to get a copy of "Google Hacking for Penetration Testers - VOLUME 2" if you already own a copy of the first edition, and the scores rates exactly that. If you don't have neither of them, I strongly encourage you to acquire Volume 2 (see details below), no matter what area of the information security field you work in (and specially if you are a penetration tester), as the contents affect to you in multiple ways. On my day-to-day security consulting practice, I'm still very surprised about how many IT people don't know about these techniques. The book is a masterpiece for information disclosure and mining from public sources, such as (but not only) Google. If I had to evaluate the book on itself, not comparing between editions, it would definitely get a score of 5/5.
The first edition was released in 2005 and opened the world of the Google Hacking techniques to the general public, together with the GHDB. The second edition title is (at least) confusing, as Volume 2 seems to denote it is a complementary book to the first edition. It is not, so I do not recommend you to get the first edition today. Volume 2, or the second edition as it should have been called, has been thoroughly updated (including most of the screenshots) to cover the latest changes and Google applications. I did a major update to the SANS "Power Search with Google" course on the first half of 2006, when some of the new Google functionality (not in the first edition) was already available. The second edition reflects those updates I identified and put back together then, even the tiny ones, such as the maximum search terms, that changed from 10 to 32. Additionally, all the statistical references, covering number of results returned by Google, and main contents have been reviewed and updated to reflect the current state of the art.
Some chapters have been kept from the previous edition (chapters 1 to 3, and chapters 6 to 9, and chapter 12), although they have suffered updates. Others have been moved (such as the old chapter 10, now chapter 4) or redesigned (like the new chapter 5). Besides, there are brand new chapters, like 10 and 11.
I specially like the updates on chapter 5, with the new tools and scripts to query Google and, specially, to parse and process the results, including several Perl and User-Agent tricks. The book, obviously, covers the Google API changes and provides solutions to overcome them, such as Aura. Chapters 6 and 8 include relevant updates to the Google code search engine and new capabilities to locate malware and binaries, plus new techniques to track down login portals and network embedded devices and reports, respectively.
The new chapter 10 is a great reference covering the new Google services from a hacking and "malicious" perspective. It is a required update given the pace Google releases new functionality and information sources, such as the AJAX capabilities and API, the source code search engine, calendar, blogger, and alert services.
The new chapter 11, "Google Hacking Showcase", includes the real-world Google Hacking samples and cases Johnny Long has been presenting in several hacking conferences during the last years. A found having a printed copy of it within the book very valuable, as it is an eye-opener, and it is a fun read. Definitely, if you have not seen Johnny's presentations and talks, I encourage you to access the archives from BlackHat and DefCon and enjoy them.
Finally, chapter 12 (the old chapter 11), covers new techniques and tools from a defensive perspective. The new additions increase the defender arsenal in order to mitigate the old and new threats covered throughout the book.
The influence of multiple authors in this edition is evident, something good for the new contents and material, but not so good for the chapter layout, as some do not follow the original format with a final summary, solutions, links and FAQ. Chapter 10 is a good example of both.
The complementary appendixes from the first edition, not directly relevant to the book topic from my perspective, have been removed. Overall, I feel some of the waffle has been left out, a smart decision (but not always easy) in order to keep the book size reasonable, and make room for the new contents.
I would like to see some of the pages that simply provide long listings from the GHDB moved to an appendix and simply referenced from the associated chapter. It might be useful to have these lists full of query samples on the book, but not just in the middle of a chapter. Another improvement would be to have a book webpage consolidating all the code samples, such as the Blogger submission script, as I'm not sure they are all available on a single website.
To sum up, if you don't have a copy of this book, go and buy Volume 2! (not to mention Johnny's involvement with charities). If you are a professional penetration tester, the new material in this second edition is highly recommended, so update your shelves and start applying the new contents on your daily practice. If you are an infosec pro, not directly involved in Google Hacking tasks, and you already own a copy of the first edition, I think you do not need Volume 2, as you already understand the threat, risks, and what is all this about.
At some point I was almost involved in co-authoring this 2nd edition, but finally it didn't happened. A pity, as definitely, this is one of today's reference books that should be on any infosec shelves.Google Hacking for Penetration Testers 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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