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Friday, March 1, 2019

Best Hacking Books You Must Read to be a Hacker


Looking for best best hacking books? We have short listed some of the highly recommended books for beginners and advanced hackers. The ethical hacking books may help you get the best security professional job you aspire. 

The job of a ethical hacker is to perform hacking to protect from crackers (unethical hackers). Some of these hacking books for beginners are about basic concepts, whereas other books focus on more advanced hacking techniques that experienced hacker can use. 

Hacking is considered to be a two-way tool wherein a computer system is penetrated either to make it more secure or to create mischief. Ethical hacking is defined as making use of programming skills, so as to penetrate a computer system, and determine its vulnerabilities. The ethical hackers are skilled computer experts, often called as the "white hats". As against non-ethical hackers or "black hats" that penetrate into a computer system and exploit it for their own personal gains or mischief, the “white hats” evaluate and point out the vulnerabilities of system software, and suggest system changes to make it less penetrable.

With an increase in the use of Internet, concerns regarding its security have also grown manifold. This is particularly true in the case of highly confidential data. There have been past instances where the sites owned by even the most influential organizations have been hacked. This calls for designing systems which are impenetrable or an identification of the weaknesses of an existing system. Due to this reason, there is now a high demand for computer experts who can conduct ethical hacking operations. 

Most of the organizations seek to acquire ethical hacking services from full-time employees or consultants so as to ensure security of their systems and information, thus making ethical hacking a highly lucrative profession. 

Are you willing to become an ethical hacker? One of the best way is to start reading books about hacking and try it yourself. Some of the best how to hack books that an aspiring ethical hacker must read are:


Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition
This hacking book is a must read for beginners. This book focuses on many common obstacles people face during beginning of the ethical hacking job. This book can help beginners do their job more efficiently. 

This is one of the best books which will take you through the technicalities of areas like programming, shell code and exploitation. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or have very little hacking knowledge, this book will help you understand the complexities of the digital security tasks. 

This excellent and well written book will make you learn all the clever stuff of getting access to a system. All in all, the best book to buy.

The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing: Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Made Easy (Syngress Basics Series)


The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing: Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Made Easy (Syngress Basics Series)The best thing about this book is that it covers all the basics of penetration testing and hacking, without assuming that the reader has any prior hacking knowledge. It provides a step-by-step journey of penetration testing, moving from Information Gathering to Scanning, Exploitation and finally, Report Writing. 

Instead of dealing with individual concepts in-depth, this book will provide you with a wholesome picture of hacking.

Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's Guide


Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's GuideThis book deals with Penetration Testing by making use of the open source Metasploit Framework testing. It is suitable for readers who have no prior knowledge of Metasploit. The tutorial-like style of the book makes you learn things by doing them. 

The ending of the book provides you with an actual penetration test’s simulated version so as to provide you with a realistic experience.

BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's Guide


BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner's GuideRight from the beginning, this book gives you what you need, without wasting time in unnecessary justifications. Instead of explaining only theoretical concepts, the book consists of finely tuned and crystal clear tutorials. It provides a good mix of basics and high level knowledge and works cohesively with the reader.

CEH Certified Ethical Hacker All-in-One Exam Guide


CEH Certified Ethical Hacker All-in-One Exam GuideThis is undoubtedly one of the most well written books of all times. It provides crisp and clear writing with relevant examples along with a humorous touch to enliven the dry and mundane subject. The contents of the book are well organized in a neither too chatty nor too dry manner. However, you require some basic networking background to derive full benefits from this book.

CompTIA Security+: Get Certified Get Ahead: SY0-301 Study Guide


CompTIA Security+: Get Certified Get Ahead: SY0-301 Study GuideThis certification book is easy to read, straightforward and explains some of the complex topics in an excellent manner. All you need to do in order to pass the test is to read the book and do the practice exercises. 

In addition to this, the “remember this sections” and the content headers highlight all the key topics that one must pay attention to. So, if you wish to straightaway get down to the study material without wasting time on esoteric gibberish, this is the book for you.

Although, hacking may sound like an interesting area of study, when it comes to the application of the various concepts of penetration testing, it is easier said than done. In addition to having an educational background in the field of computer science, the hackers must have an affinity to learning and acquiring new skills on an ongoing basis. Also, the ethical hackers must possess out-of-the box thinking so that they are able to come with maximum number of possible ways of designing and securing a computer system.

Hacking For Dummies - Beginners Tutorials


These tutorials are not really simple for anyone who is just starting to learn hacking techniques. However, these should be simple starting point for you. I am sure you have different opinion about complexity of each tutorial however advanced hacker are going to be calling this a job of script kiddie (beginner hacker). Even to acquire the skills of a script kiddie you need to have good understanding of computer fundamentals and programming.

  1. Cybrary - For those looking to learn ethical hacking skills online, Cybrary provides the perfect platform to do so. Cybrary is a free online IT and cyber security training network that provides instruction in the form of self-paced, easy-to-follow videos. Featuring courses on topics such as Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking, Advanced Penetration Testing, Post Exploitation Hacking and Computer and Hacking Forensics, Cybrary provides instruction from the beginner to the highly-advanced level of hacking. Additionally, Cybrary offers supplemental study material along with their courses free of charge. With their in-depth training videos and study guides, Cybrary ensures that users develop the best hacking skills.
  2. Hacking Tutorials for Beginners - By BreakTheSecurity.com
  3. How to learn Ethical hacking - By Astalavista.com
  4. Penetration Testing Tutorial - By Guru99.com
  5. Backtrack Penetration Testing Tutorial
  6. Introduction to Penetration Testing
  7. Information Gathering with Nmap
  8. Simple How To Articles By Open Web Application Security
  9. The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security
  10. Secure Design Principles
  11. 10 steps to secure software

Cryptography Related Tutorials

Cryptography is must know topic for any aspiring security professional or a ethical hacker. You must understand how encryption and decryption is done. You must understand why some of the old encryption techniques do not work in modern computing world.

This is a important area and a lot of software programmers and professional do not understand it very well. Learning cryptography involves a lot of good understanding of mathematics, this means you also need to have good fundamentals on discrete mathematics. 

  1. Introduction to Public Key Cryptography
  2. Crypto Tutorial
  3. Introduction to Cryptography
  4. An Overview of Cryptography
  5. Cryptography Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples
  6. The Crypto Tutorial - Learn How to Keep Secret Secret
  7. Introduction to cryptology, Part 1: Basic Cryptology Concepts


Websites For Security Related Articles And News

These are some websites, that you may find useful to find hacking related resources and articles. A lot of simple tricks and tips are available for experimenting through these sites for improving yourself to become advanced hacker.

In recent years, many people are aspiring to learn how to hack. With growing interest in this area, a lot of different types of hacking practices are evolving. With popularity of social networks many people have inclined towards vulnerability in various social networks like facebook, twitter, and myspace etc. 

Continuous learning about latest security issues, news and vulnerability reports are really important for any hacker or a security professional. Some of the sites that keep publishing informative articles and news are listed here. 

  1. http://www.astalavista.com/
  2. http://packetstormsecurity.com/
  3. http://www.blackhat.com/
  4. http://www.metasploit.com/
  5. http://sectools.org/
  6. http://www.2600.com/
  7. DEF CON - Hacking conference
  8. http://www.breakthesecurity.com/
  9. http://www.hacking-tutorial.com/
  10. http://www.evilzone.org/
  11. http://hackaday.com/
  12. http://www.hitb.org/
  13. http://www.hackthissite.org/
  14. http://pentestmag.com
  15. http://www.securitytube.net/
  16. https://www.ssllabs.com/


EBooks And Whitepapers

Some of the research papers by security experts and gurus can provide you a lot of information and inspiration. White papers can be really difficult to read and understand therefore you may need to read them multiple times. Once you understand the topic well, reading will become much faster and you will be able to skim through a lot content in less time.

  1. Handbook of Applied Cryptography - This ebook contains some free chapter from one of the popular cryptography books. The full book is also available on amazon at Cryptography Book.
  2. Network Penetration testing Guide
  3. How to hack anything in Java
  4. Mcafee on iPhone and iPad Security
  5. A Good Collection of White papers on security and vulnerabilities - This site contains collection of white papers from different sources and some of these white papers are really worth referring.
  6. Engineering Principles for Information Technology Security
  7. Basic Principles Of Information Protection
  8. Open Web Application Security Project - OWASP is one of the most popular sites that contains web application security related information .


Videos & Play Lists

Those who like to watch video tutorials, here are few I liked. However there are many small video available on youtube. Feel free to explore more and share with us if you like something.

  1. Cryptography Course By Dan Boneh Stanford University
  2. Open Security Training- Youtube Playlist of More than 90 hours. I have found this to be the biggest free training available for security related topic.
  3. OWASP AppSec USA 2011: Youtube Playlist containing compilation of OWASP conference highlight in 2011.
  4. Defcon: How I Met your Girlfriend - Defcon is one of the most popular hacker conference. The presenters in this conference are well know inside the hacking industry.
  5. Defcon: What happens when you steal a hackers computer
  6. Defcon: Nmap: Scanning the Internet
  7. Public Key Cryptography: Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
  8. Web application Pen testing
  9. Intro to Scanning Nmap, Hping, Amap, TCPDump, Metasploit


Forums For Hackers And Security Professionals

Just like any other area, forums are really great help for learning from other experts. Hundreds of security experts and ethical/non-ethical hackers are willing to share their knowledge on forums for some reason. Please keep in mind to do enough research before post a question and be polite to people who take time to answer your question. 

  1. Stackoverflow for security professionals
  2. http://darksat.x47.net/
  3. http://forums.securityinfowatch.com/
  4. http://forums.cnet.com/spyware-viruses-security-forum/
  5. http://www.hackforums.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=47


Vulnerability Databases And Resources

Vulnerability Databases are the first place to start your day as a security professional. Any new vulnerability detection is generally available through the public vulnerability databases. These databases are a big source of information for hackers to be able to understand and exploit/avoid/fix the vulnerability. 

  1. http://www.exploit-db.com/
  2. http://1337day.com/
  3. http://securityvulns.com/
  4. http://www.securityfocus.com/
  5. http://www.osvdb.org/
  6. http://www.securiteam.com/
  7. http://secunia.com/advisories/
  8. http://insecure.org/sploits_all.html
  9. http://zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/published/
  10. http://nmrc.org/pub/index.html
  11. http://web.nvd.nist.gov
  12. http://www.vupen.com/english/security-advisories/
  13. http://www.vupen.com/blog/
  14. http://cvedetails.com/
  15. http://www.rapid7.com/vulndb/index.jsp
  16. http://oval.mitre.org/

Product Specific Vulnerability Information

Some of the very popular products in the world require a special attention and therefore you may want to look at the specific security websites directly from vendors. I have kept Linux. Microsoft and apache in this list, however it may apply to any product you may be heavily using. 

  1. Red Hat Security and other updates Site
  2. Microsoft Products Security Bulletin
  3. Apache Foundation Products Security Repository
  4. Ubuntu Software Security Center
  5. Linux Security Repository


Tools And Programs For Hacking / Security

There are dozens of tools available for doing different types of hacking and tests. Tools are really important to become more productive at your work. Some of the very common tools that are used by hackers are listed here. You may have different choice of tools based on your own comfort.

  1. nmap
  2. NSS
  3. Hping
  4. TCPDump
  5. Metasploit
  6. Wireshark
  7. Network Stuff
  8. Nikto

Summary

I have tried to compile some of these resources for my own reference for the journey of learning I am going to start. I am not even at a beginner level of becoming hacker but the knowledge of this field really fascinates me and keeps me motivated for learning more and more. I hope will be able to become successful in this.

A lot of people use their knowledge skills for breaking stuff and stealing. I personally think that doing harm to someone is a weak choice and will not have a good ending. I would recommend not to use your skills for any un-ethical endeavor. A single misuse of your skill may jeopardize your career since most companies do a strict third party background check before they hire a ethical hacker or a security personal. 

There are dozens of companies looking for ethical hackers and security professionals. There are really good number of opportunities in this area and its really niche compensation segment. You will be easily able to get a decent job without even acquiring all the expert level skills to become a pro hacker.