Best ethical hacking books for beginners

HacksLand | The computer science playground

Posted by Thilan Dissanayaka on May 09, 2020

Hacking is an interesting in computer science aria to study. Hear we are going to see some awesome books to get started with ethical hacking.


Hacking the art of exploitation

This is the greatest book I have read about hacking. It is written by Jon Erickson. It covers Programming, Exploitation, Shellcoding , Cryptography and Networking.

In first chapter there is a small introduction and some terminologies. Second chapter explain computer architecture and basics of C and Assembly programming. Also you can learn how to debug binaries with GDB. Most programs are written in C and author use GDB to explain how those programs are built in Assembly level.

Exploitation and shellcoding is an essential part of hacking. Many exploitation techniques like Stack based overflows, heap overflows, format string exploits are greatly explained with live examples. Shellcode is a set of CPU instruction and it is used to gain access on a system. This is an essential part of the exploitation process. In this book you can learn how to write a shellcode with assembly. There is a CD with Linux distribution included in the book. So you can use it to practice exercises.
Cryptography is the art of hiding data. Hear you can learn many cryptography techniques and basic concepts of cryptology. In most examples C language is used to write codes.
There is no hacking without learning about networks. In this book there is a complete chapter for explain basic networking theories like TCP/IP, OSI model etc. Also you may learn how to write socket programs with C. I think It's really value to read it. Why not get a printed copy and start your journey? :-).

Gray hat hacking


ShellCoder's handbook

When you read the title you may realize what kind of a book it is. Not only writing shellcodes. This is a complete book about exploit development.

Penetration testing with Kali

This is the official document comes with OSCP course I found it on the internet.

CEH Study guide

This book is written for prepare to CEH exam. Actually I have not completed CEH, OSCP or any other hacking exam. But I love to read these books and learn new things. CEH is beginner focuses security exam. There are separate chapters for networking, Cryptography, Scanning etc. You can learn many basic things from this book. Read it if you are beginner to hacking.

Programing from the ground up

I found this book while I learning exploit writing. This book covers basics of system architecture, Assembly language and some C programming. It explain programming in a specific way. The name also says we are learning programming from the ground-up That mean it start teaching from Assembly and goes to top level. In most time what we do is write programs in C and disassemble those to see how they built in Assembly level So this book may be a new experience to you.

Web application hacker's handbook

This is a classical book to learn web application hacking and penetration testing It covers various exploitation techniques like SQL injection, Cross site scripting, cross site request forgery , file upload vulnerability etc. to use for web applications.

Practical malware analysis

This book is written by  Michael Sikorski and Andrew Honig. Following topics are covered in the book.

1) Introduction and lab setup
This section focus on basic malware terminologies. You may learn how to catch a malware using a honey pot, how to identify them, Usage of automated tools to unpack binaries etc. Also hear we setup a lab to practice.

2) Static analysis
Hear we disassemble the binary and try to understand what it does in Assembly level. In this book they explain how to use IDA pro to disassemble and analyze. Also there is a assembly crash course to begin with.

3) Dynamic analysis
Dynamic analysis is the process of debugging and finding further information. In this book you may learn how to use a debugger to do that.

4) Malware Functionality
Hear we can learn about different malware types like ransomware, worms, rootkits etc and there functions.

5) Anti Reverse engineering
This is another interesting topic. We can build a binary with anti reversing protections. So it's hard to analyze it. Hear we can learn some AR techniques and how to bypass them.

If you are planning to learn reverse engineering or malware analyzing this will be a great choice to you.

Stealing the network and how to own the box

This is actually not a educational book. You can find some great fictional stories about hacking in this book. Theses stories are not actual ones But they are not fake like hacking scenes in Hollywood movies. You may have see that there are bunch of hacking tools to hack a system in a minute in films. They type two three commands and hackers break into the system You can learn nothing by watching those. But this book is filled with actual theories and concepts. I hope you may like it. There are 10 awesome stories like Hide and sneak, The worm turns , H3x's adventure etc My favorite one was "The worm turns". It is a story about reverse engineering a worm.




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