Books On Hacking?

[PsychoJester]

Ok, I'm not sure if i should buy a book or guide to help aid me in to some programming. I know what books i would buy. I will leave a link to them and tell me if it is wise to invest in a guide or to just read the tutorials here. thanks!

The Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking

Or

Hacking Exposed

PsychoJester

[Ennis]

Personally I bought Hacking Exposed when I was say 17 roughly a month or two after joining here. It was a bit expensive but it is a good book. Well worth a Christmas gift maybe. Contains a good giude for newbies in some of the more script kiddie attacks you may across, perhaps I would advise you to at least give it a try then move on, i.e. dont take it as an end all. The tutorials here are a good source of info but there are plenty of books available so I dont recomment relying purely on AO material.

Good luck anyway.

[MrLinus]

Go with Hacking Exposed if you are going to get a book to start with. I don't recommend the other one (which is just a copy of many websites).

I also recently picked up Hacking: The Art of Exploitation which I'd recommend. Interesting read for a 1st edition.

[D0pp139an93r]

Hacking Exposed is a good book, many of them are. I would advise any book that comes with a good CD-ROM. I'd also warn you away from anything written by Carolyn Meinel.

[PsychoJester]

thank you guys. i appreciate the help. Me and Deimos326 are starting a Hacking portal (cheifess.com) soon and we need to get a cheap host and also a domain name. but that is irrelevant un less you can sugest one. THANK YOU

[mafo00]

Don't by the Unethical Guide to Hacking. I bought it last summer, and most useful parts aren't explained very well. You can find most of the book online, anyways, at ankitfadia.com. A lot of the book is extremely out of date, as well.

Good hosting:

http://dr2.net
http://mesopia.com

A great resource to find hosts for you which are cheap is http://findmyhosting.com

[phishphreek]

As far as your programming. Which language were you interested in?

Hack Attacks Revealed has quite a bit of code to examine. You can always just download the source code for many of the security tools/scripts and look at them too.

If you just want to learn some coding in general... I have learned quite a bit from
C How to Program
and
C++ How to Program

Those are great books and they are pretty easy to understand.

I was told to learn those languages first because so many other languages were derived from c and c++ such as perl and java

On another note:

I love the hacking exposed series . I have purchased a couple of them.

I really like the Hackers Challenge and Hacker Challenge 2 books too (part of the hacking exposed series by foundstone). They give you an opportunity to look at the aftermath of an attack. They don't give you all the logs that you'd get in real life... that'd take a whole book for each attack.

It gives a good opportuntiy to look at the situation and apply what you have learned and also a way to make you think more creatively.

I also like the Maximum Linux Security or Maximum Windows 2000 Security books.
I have heard people talk badly about them, but I personally like them.

Incident Response is a great book.

Besides the technical books I have read some others that I really like.

The Art of Deception
@Large
The Cuckoos Egg
The Hacker Diaries

There are too many to list. Those are a couple that I have.

Thnks to MsM for recommneding the couple of non technical ones. I read them over the summer. They were great.
I was reading about 1 book per week this summer... so I got a lot covered.

Right now, I'm reading Honeypots and Know Your Enemy .

So far... they are GREAT! I have big plans for when I move into my apt.

Good luck in your learning. We are here to help when you need it.

[PsychoJester]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate all of your help. I will pick up some books over the Holiday. I have been reading many of the tutorials and they are very helpfull. thanks again