| This is a book about hacking. It’s not a novel about a set of elusive cyberpunks, it’s a do-it-yourself manual. Are we trying to tell you how to break into other people’s systems? No, we’re trying to help you make your own systems more secure by breaking into them yourself. Yes, this has the side effect that you might learn how to break into someone else’s system as well, and therein lies much of the controversy surrounding hacking.
You should read this book if you work in the information security field, or have an interest in that field. You should have a pretty good idea of how to use a computer, and ideally have some experience installing an operating system, and various application programs. You should be an Internet user. The material is aimed at mid to advanced level, but we do our best to provide some of the basics for beginners. If you’re a beginning information security student, you may struggle a bit with some of the material, but it is all understandable if you spend the effort. There are some beginner techniques taught, such as diffing, which will serve the learner through all levels of skill.
We want to teach you the skills and rules that are used by hackers to review systems for security holes. To this end, we’ve assembled some of the world’s best hackers to instruct you on topics they have expertise in. You’ll learn about cracking simple encoding schemes, how to write buffer overflows, how to use packet sniffing utilities, and how to feed carefully crafted data to both clients and servers to defeat security mechanisms. This book will teach you the role of the attacker in the battle for securing your systems. |
