Hack Attacks Revealed: A Complete Reference with Custom Security Hacking Toolkit Book

The path to pro hackerdom is Hack Attacks Revealed, but be warned, the mark of a real hacker is serious technical expertise. Author, John Chirillo, starts with the internal details of IP, TCP, ethernet packets and the care and feeding of subnets even network sysadmins don't need to know but which anyone aiming to spoof a connection or fingerprint the hidden details of a network can't live without. For the first third of Hack Attacks Revealed you might be forgiven for thinking you're training as a network design engineer. Even network cable types are covered. Then it gets complicated. Real hackers are real programmers. There's most of a C programming course built into the book, and you need it--and preferably Perl as well--to understand the wide range of included listings. Much of the book is straightforward lists: port assignments, packet structures, handshaking protocols and other low level network engineering detail. Only by understanding can you hope to subvert systems--prevent others usurping them. To help there's a CD full of hacker utilities used to create and check for holes in your own security, though the demo TigerTools suite is too crippled to be useful. The lists of hardware (routers, switches), software and operating system vulnerabilities covered is awesome. The fact that fixes for most of them are available but often unimplemented is depressing. You'll laugh, you'll cry but you'll keep reading. As a commentary on a clearly immature technology Hack Attacks Revealed is fascinating. As a wake-up call to sysadmins everywhere it should be compulsory reading. --Steve PatientRead More