Hacking Books

I often get asked, what are the Best books for hacking? Bellow is a curated list that I personally recommend for beginners to get started with hacking. You can never have enough information. I hope you enjoy this list, and if I have missed a good title, let me know!

Hacking : The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition

Hacking is the art of creative problem-solving, whether that means finding an unconventional solution to a difficult problem or exploiting holes in sloppy programming. Many people call themselves hackers, but few have the strong technical foundation needed to really push the envelope.

Buy

Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking

In Penetration Testing, security expert, researcher, and trainer Georgia Weidman introduces you to the core skills and techniques that every pentester needs. Using a virtual machine-based lab that includes Kali Linux and vulnerable operating systems, you'll run through a series of practical lessons

Buy

Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker's Handbook, Fifth Edition

Fortify your network and avert digital catastrophe with proven strategies from a team of security experts. Completely updated and featuring 13 new chapters, explains the enemy's current weapons, skills, and tactics and offers field-tested remedies, case studies, and ready-to-try testing labs.

Buy

The Hacker Playbook 3: Practical Guide To Penetration Testing

THP3 will take your offensive hacking skills, thought processes, and attack paths to the next level. This book focuses on real-world campaigns and attacks, exposing you to different initial entry points, exploitation, custom malware, persistence, and lateral movement all without getting caught! This heavily lab-based book will include multiple Virtual Machines, testing environments, and custom THP tools.

Buy

A Bug Hunter's Diary: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Software Security

A Bug Hunter's Diary follows security expert Tobias Klein as he tracks down and exploits bugs in some of the most popular software, like Apple's iOS, the VLC media player, web browsers, and even the Mac OS X kernel.

Buy

Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms and Source Code in C

From the world's most renowned security technologist, Bruce Schneier, this 20th Anniversary Edition is the most definitive reference on cryptography ever published and is the seminal work on cryptography.

Buy

Attacking Network Protocols: A Hacker's Guide to Capture, Analysis, and Exploitation

Attacking Network Protocols is a deep dive into network protocol security from James Forshaw, one of the world's leading bug hunters. This comprehensive guide looks at networking from an attacker's perspective to help you discover, exploit, and ultimately protect vulnerabilities.

Buy

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand--no prior programming experience required.

Buy

Digital Forensics and Incident Response: A practical guide

Digital Forensics and Incident Response will guide you through the entire spectrum of tasks associated with incident response

Buy

Ghidra Software Reverse Engineering for Beginners

This book is a starting point for developers interested in leveraging Ghidra to create patches and extend tool capabilities to meet their cybersecurity needs.

Buy

Black Hat Go: Go Programming For Hackers and Pentesters

Black Hat Go explores the darker side of Go, the popular programming language revered by hackers for its simplicity, efficiency, and reliability.

Buy

Blue Team Field Manual (BTFM)

Blue Team Field Manual (BTFM) is a Cybersecurity Incident Response Guide that aligns with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework consisting of the five core functions of Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover by providing the tactical steps to follow and commands to use when preparing for, working through and recovering from a Cyber Security Incident.

Buy

C Programming Language 2nd Edition

This ebook is the first authorized digital version of Kernighan and Ritchie's 1988 classic, The C Programming Language (2nd Ed.). One of the best-selling programming books published in the last fifty years.

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Cryptography Engineering: Design Principles and Practical Applications

After a basic overview of cryptography and what it means today, this indispensable resource covers such topics as block ciphers, block modes, hash functions, encryption modes, message authentication codes, implementation issues, negotiation protocols, and more.

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Cyberjutsu: Cybersecurity for the Modern Ninja

Like Sun Tzu's Art of War for Modern Business, this book uses ancient ninja scrolls as the foundation for teaching readers about cyber-warfare, espionage and security.

Buy

Designing BSD Rootkits: An Introduction to Kernel Hacking

Though rootkits have a fairly negative image, they can be used for both good and evil. Designing BSD Rootkits arms you with the knowledge you need to write offensive rootkits, to defend against malicious ones, and to explore the FreeBSD kernel and operating system in the process.

Buy

Foundations of Information Security: A Straightforward Introduction

High-level overview of the information security field. Covers key concepts like confidentiality, integrity, and availability, then dives into practical applications of these ideas in the areas of operational, physical, network, application, and operating system security.

Buy

Learning Python: Powerful Object-Oriented Programming

Get a comprehensive, in-depth introduction to the core Python language with this hands-on book. Based on author Mark Lutz's popular training course, this updated fifth edition will help you quickly write efficient, high-quality code with Python.

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Learn Computer Forensics: A beginner's guide to searching, analyzing, and securing digital evidence

Get up and running with collecting evidence using forensics best practices to present your findings in judicial or administrative proceedings

Buy

Linux Basics for Hackers

This practical, tutorial-style book uses the Kali Linux distribution to teach Linux basics with a focus on how hackers would use them. Topics include Linux command line basics, filesystems, networking, BASH basics, package management, logging, and the Linux kernel and drivers.

Buy

Malware Analyst's Cookbook and DVD: Tools and Techniques for Fighting Malicious Code

Security professionals will find plenty of solutions in this book to the problems posed by viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, rootkits, adware, and other invasive software. Written by well-known malware experts, this guide reveals solutions to numerous problems and includes a DVD of custom programs and tools that illustrate the concepts, enhancing your skills.

Buy

Malware Data Science: Attack Detection and Attribution

Malware Data Science explains how to identify, analyze, and classify large-scale malware using machine learning and data visualization.

Buy

Malware Analysis and Detection Engineering: A Comprehensive Approach to Detect and Analyze Modern Malware

Discover how the internals of malware work and how you can analyze and detect it. You will learn not only how to analyze and reverse malware, but also how to classify and categorize it, giving you insight into the intent of the malware.

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Mastering Malware Analysis: The complete malware analyst's guide to combating malicious software, APT, cybercrime, and IoT attacks

Master malware analysis to protect your systems from getting infected

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Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's Guide

The Metasploit Framework makes discovering, exploiting, and sharing vulnerabilities quick and relatively painless. But while Metasploit is used by security professionals everywhere, the tool can be hard to grasp for first-time users. Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's Guide fills this gap by teaching you how to harness the Framework and interact with the vibrant community of Metasploit contributors.

Buy

Modern X86 Assembly Language Programming: Covers x86 64-bit, AVX, AVX2, and AVX-512

The focus in this second edition is exclusively on 64-bit base programming architecture and AVX programming. Modern X86 Assembly Language Programming's structure and sample code are designed to help you quickly understand x86 assembly language

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PTFM: Purple Team Field Manual

The purple team field manual is a manual for all security professionals and integrates red and blue team methodologies.

Buy

Practical Binary Analysis: Build Your Own Linux Tools for Binary Instrumentation, Analysis, and Disassembly

Stop manually analyzing binary! Practical Binary Analysis is the first book of its kind to present advanced binary analysis topics, such as binary instrumentation, dynamic taint analysis, and symbolic execution, in an accessible way.

Buy

Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software

Malware analysis is big business, and attacks can cost a company dearly. When malware breaches your defenses, you need to act quickly to cure current infections and prevent future ones from occurring.

Buy

Practical Packet Analysis, 3E: Using Wireshark to Solve Real-World Network Problems

It's easy to capture packets with Wireshark, the most popular network sniffer, whether off the wire or from the air. But how do you use those packets to understand what's happening on your network?

Buy

Practical Reverse Engineering: x86, x64, ARM, Windows Kernel, Reversing Tools, and Obfuscation

Analyzing how hacks are done, to stop them in the future. The book covers x86, x64, and ARM (the first book to cover all three), Windows kernel-mode code rootkits and drivers; virtual machine protection techniques.

Buy

Practical Mobile Forensics: Forensically investigate and analyze iOS, Android, and Windows 10 devices, 4th Edition

Become well-versed with forensics for the Android, iOS, and Windows 10 mobile platforms by learning essential techniques and exploring real-life scenarios

Buy

Real-World Bug Hunting: A Field Guide to Web Hacking

Real-World Bug Hunting is the premier field guide to finding software bugs. Whether you're a cyber-security beginner who wants to make the internet safer or a seasoned developer who wants to write secure code, ethical hacker Peter Yaworski will show you how it's done.

Buy

Red Team Development and Operations: A practical guide

This book is the culmination of years of experience in the information technology and cybersecurity field. Components of this book have existed as rough notes, ideas, informal and formal processes developed and adopted by the authors as they led and executed red team engagements over many years.

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Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering

Beginning with a basic primer on reverse engineering-including computer internals, operating systems, and assembly language-and then discussing the various applications of reverse engineering, this book provides readers with practical, in-depth techniques for software reverse engineering.

Buy

Rootkits and Bootkits: Reversing Modern Malware and Next Generation Threats

Rootkits and Bootkits will teach you how to understand and counter sophisticated, advanced threats buried deep in a machine's boot process or UEFI firmware.

Buy

RTFM: Red Team Field Manual

The Red Team Field Manual (RTFM) is a no fluff, but thorough reference guide for serious Red Team members who routinely find themselves on a mission without Google or the time to scan through a man page.

Buy

Serious Cryptography: A Practical Introduction to Modern Encryption

This practical guide to modern encryption breaks down the fundamental mathematical concepts at the heart of cryptography without shying away from meaty discussions of how they work. You'll learn about authenticated encryption, secure randomness, hash functions, block ciphers, and public-key techniques such as RSA and elliptic curve cryptography.

Buy

Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking

Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking reveals the craftier side of the hacker's repertoire---why hack into something when you could just ask for access? Undetectable by firewalls and antivirus software, social engineering relies on human fault to gain access to sensitive spaces.

Buy

The Art of Memory Forensics: Detecting Malware and Threats in Windows, Linux, and Mac Memory

The Art of Memory Forensics, a follow-up to the bestselling Malware Analyst's Cookbook, is a practical guide to the rapidly emerging investigative technique for digital forensics, incident response, and law enforcement.

Buy

The Car Hacker's Handbook: A Guide for the Penetration Tester

The Car Hacker's Handbook will give you a deeper understanding of the computer systems and embedded software in modern vehicles. It begins by examining vulnerabilities and providing detailed explanations of communications over the CAN bus and between devices and systems.

Buy

Hacking Connected Cars: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

Hacking Connected Cars deconstructs the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used to hack into connected cars and autonomous vehicles to help you identify and mitigate vulnerabilities affecting cyber-physical vehicles.

Buy

The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware

In The Hardware Hacker, Huang shares his experiences in manufacturing and open hardware, creating an illuminating and compelling career retrospective.

Buy

The IDA Pro Book, 2nd Edition: The Unofficial Guide to the World's Most Popular Disassembler

No source code? No problem. With IDA Pro, the interactive disassembler, you live in a source code-optional world. IDA can automatically analyze the millions of opcodes that make up an executable and present you with a disassembly.

Buy

The Linux Command Line, 2nd Edition: A Complete Introduction

You've experienced the shiny, point-and-click surface of your Linux computer now dive below and explore its depths with the power of the command line.

Buy

The Practice of Network Security Monitoring: Understanding Incident Detection and Response

Network security is not simply about building impenetrable walls determined attackers will eventually overcome traditional defenses. The most effective computer security strategies integrate network security monitoring.

Buy

The Rootkit Arsenal: Escape And Evasion

With the growing prevalence of the Internet, rootkit technology has taken center stage in the battle between White Hats and Black Hats. Adopting an approach that favors full disclosure, The Rootkit Arsenal presents the most accessible, timely, and complete coverage of rootkit technology.

Buy

The Shellcoder's Handbook: Discovering and Exploiting Security Holes

This much-anticipated revision, written by the ultimate group of top security experts in the world, features 40 percent new content on how to find security holes in any operating system or application

Buy

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws

Web applications are the front door to most organizations, exposing them to attacks that may disclose personal information, execute fraudulent transactions, or compromise ordinary users. A step-by-step techniques for attacking and defending the range of ever-evolving web applications.

Buy

Threat Modeling: Designing for Security

You'll explore various threat modeling approaches, find out how to test your designs against threats, and learn effective ways to address threats that have been validated at Microsoft and other top companies. With pages of specific actionable advice, Adam Shostack details how to build better security into the design of systems, software, or services from the outset.

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Unauthorised Access: Physical Penetration Testing For IT Security Teams

Most IT security teams concentrate on keeping networks and systems safe from attacks from the outside-but what if your attacker was on the inside?

Buy

Web Security for Developers: Real Threats, Practical Defense

Website security made easy. This book covers the most common ways websites get hacked and how web developers can defend themselves.

Buy

Open Source Intelligence Techniques: Resources for Searching and Analyzing Online Information

New (2022) 9th Edition contains many updated techniques, scripts, and tools! It is time to look at OSINT in a different way. For many years, and within previous editions of this book, we have relied on external resources to supply our search tools, virtual environments, and investigation techniques.

Buy