Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

[froggerismygod]

It's an excellent book. Of course most of the techniques listed in it will need updating to work on modern well protected systems, but it provides a great foundation and an understanding of the basics.

[Sector]

I would agree fully with what the previous poster said, it needs updating (I believe there is a second edition of this book out now - same title, but followed by 'Second Edition').

Anyway, I would recommend this book to anyone who has at least a little knowledge of C/C++ and Assembly - because unlike other 'hacking' books, it doesn't just give you a list of hacks to use or try out, it actually teaches you the theory behind each hack / exploit that it provides - not to mention a wealth of useful information too.

Big thumbs up from me.

[tremor77]

bookz iz for peeple that reed.

if you want to read to learn hacking or anything computer related.. if reading is your thing.. there is only one name to know.. and that's O'Reilly.. and not Bill..

http://oreilly.com/

you can get most of these in e-books now too.. which imho is still reading.. ftw i hate letters when they are formed together to make words and sentences... it's all knowledgy and stuff

[Seraph89]

The O'Reilly books are incredible and I owe a lot them, cant go wrong there!

Might give this book a try though for a bit of light reading

[Typecasted]

love this book. I knew nothing of programming and assembly before this, but with a few re-reads... ok Alot of re read pages, I'm getting it. Good book =]
Hint: noob to noob, take notes. Not saying anyone is, just saying if you are and you know it. =P

[star14]

One of the best book that you can read for beginners like myself. when carefully planned this book can be a good guideline for us so we wouldn't run around pointlessly to learn hacking. The learning process may be slower but more in depth and more beneficial for us in a long run. However, a fair knowledge of programming in C will help in reading this book although it is not essential. Good book!

[nerdLife]

I love this book. So much.
Well at least so far...I'm having a problem running some of the example code. I've tried:
--Downloading the "booksrc" (the example files used in the book) from No Starch Press thinking maybe my disk drive corrupted it (it almost never works)
--Googling
-----"Warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments"
-----"hacking the art of exploitation troubleshoot"
-----"warning: format not a string literal"
-----"pointer.c" "format not a string literal" "hacking the art of exploitation"
but my googleFu is weak. Very weak.

So here I am. I kind of wish there was a specific forum for the No Starch Press books. Either way.

Here's what the pointer.c (from page 44) looks like in vim:

Code: Select all

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(){
   char str_a[20];  // a 20 element character array
   char *pointer;   // a pointer, meant for a character array
   char *pointer2;  // and yet another one

   strcpy(str_a, "Hello World\n");
   pointer = str_a; // set the first pointer to the start of the array
   printf(pointer);

   pointer2 = pointer + 2; // set the second one 2 bytes further in
   printf(pointer2);       // print it
   strcpy(pointer2, "y you guys!\n"); // copy into that spot
   printf(pointer);        // print again
}


Here's the error I get when I try to run pointer.c (from page 44 in the second edition):

Code: Select all

~/booksrc# ./pointer.c
./pointer.c: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `('
./pointer.c: line 4: `int main(){'


or if I gcc it:

Code: Select all

~/booksrc# gcc pointer.c
pointer.c: In function ‘main’:                     
pointer.c:11: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments                                           
pointer.c:14: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments                                           
pointer.c:16: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments


Specs about my box:
--Late 2009 Unibody MacBook Pro (We get a mega discount through my school. Please don't start a Mac v Windows debate )
--Snow Leopard V. 10.6.8
--Enough ram and memory to support everything.

My Virtual Machine:
--VirtualBox 4.0.12 r72916
runnning
--Backtrack 5 32bit
..
I have all of the dependencies (I'm pretty sure).

I'm not super familiar with C (of any kind) programming, but from what I can tell, there's nothing wrong with the code.
My only other thought is that maybe there's been an update or something to gcc...but I doubt it.
If you have any ideas about why this is happening, where else I can look, or where else I can post to, or anything else PLEASE reply.
Thanks yawl.
1st post of many (hopefully) btw

[mShred]

I'm not completely sure.. And I'm on my phone so I can't really check. But its obviously something wrong with line 4. I'm no C expert, but it looks like you need to seperate the 'main()' from the '{'. Try putting the '{' on a newline. Also, I think it'd be better to start a new topic next time. But ill let it slide.

EDIT: Thank you crunch. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure the spacing matters much. You need a return value though. Before you end the main function, throw a 'return 0;' in there. My shitty responses are due to my lack of thorough reading. And as I said, I know little of C.

[Crunchbite]

Wow shred....just wow

[ColdwaterQ]

I have been reading this book and found it really useful. I am more into website based hacking but when I am networking to try and find jobs this is a book that often comes up in conversation and so it doesn't hurt to know about it.

As for the languages, I found that after taking a class in C I was able to teach my self assembly language in about 12 hours by trying to make some rudimentary things like a square root program.