Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python

 

A beginner's guide to cryptography and computer programming with Python

Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python not only teaches you how to write in secret ciphers with paper and pencil. This book teaches you how to write your own cipher programs and also the hacking programs that can break the encrypted messages from these ciphers. Unfortunately, the programs in this book won’t get the reader in trouble with the law (or rather, fortunately) but it is a guide on the basics of both cryptography and the Python programming language. Instead of presenting a dull laundry list of concepts, this book provides the source code to several fun programming projects for adults and young adults.

User Review

This is an excellent Python book that teaches the language through fascinating cryptographic algorithms.

This is a wonderful book both for learning Python and for some cryptography basics. I can't recommend this more. I would suggest this to anyone regardless of programming experience.

I am learning Python and basic ciphers and this fit my needs to a tee.

About the Author

Albert Sweigart (but you can call him Al), is a software developer in San Francisco, California. He is originally from Houston, Texas. He laughs out loud when watching park squirrels, which makes people think he’s a simpleton. His previous books are "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" and "Making Games with Python & Pygame".

Read More

Metasploit

 

The Penetration Tester's Guide

User Review

"The best guide to the Metasploit Framework." —HD Moore, Founder of the Metasploit Project

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.

Once you've built your foundation for penetration testing, you'll learn the Framework's conventions, interfaces, and module system as you launch simulated attacks. You'll move on to advanced penetration testing techniques, including network reconnaissance and enumeration, client-side attacks, wireless attacks, and targeted social-engineering attacks.

Learn how to:

• Find and exploit unmaintained, misconfigured, and unpatched systems
• Perform reconnaissance and find valuable information about your target
• Bypass anti-virus technologies and circumvent security controls
• Integrate Nmap, NeXpose, and Nessus with Metasploit to automate discovery
• Use the Meterpreter shell to launch further attacks from inside the network
• Harness standalone Metasploit utilities, third-party tools, and plug-ins
• Learn how to write your own Meterpreter post exploitation modules and scripts

You'll even touch on exploit discovery for zero-day research, write a fuzzer, port existing exploits into the Framework, and learn how to cover your tracks. Whether your goal is to secure your own networks or to put someone else's to the test, Metasploit: The Penetration Tester's Guide will take you there and beyond

Read More

Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

The Art of Human Hacking

The first book to reveal and dissect the technical aspect of many social engineering maneuvers

From elicitation, pretexting, influence and manipulation all aspects of social engineering are picked apart, discussed and explained by using real world examples, personal experience and the science behind them to unraveled the mystery in social engineering.

Kevin Mitnick—one of the most famous social engineers in the world—popularized the term “social engineering.” He explained that it is much easier to trick someone into revealing a password for a system than to exert the effort of hacking into the system. Mitnick claims that this social engineering tactic was the single-most effective method in his arsenal. This indispensable book examines a variety of maneuvers that are aimed at deceiving unsuspecting victims, while it also addresses ways to prevent social engineering threats.

Examines social engineering, the science of influencing a target to perform a desired task or divulge information

Read More

Violent Python

A Cookbook for Hackers, Forensic Analysts, Penetration Testers and Security Engineers

Violent Python shows you how to move from a theoretical understanding of offensive computing concepts to a practical implementation. Instead of relying on another attacker's tools, this book will teach you to forge your own weapons using the Python programming language. This book demonstrates how to write Python scripts to automate large-scale network attacks, extract metadata, and investigate forensic artifacts. It also shows how to write code to intercept and analyze network traffic using Python, craft and spoof wireless frames to attack wireless and Bluetooth devices, and how to data-mine popular social media websites and evade modern anti-virus.

Read More

The Mac Hacker's Handbook

The Mac Hacker's Handbook by Charlie Miller

As more and more vulnerabilities are found in the Mac OS X (Leopard) operating system, security researchers are realizing the importance of developing proof-of-concept exploits for those vulnerabilities. This unique tome is the first book to uncover the flaws in the Mac OS X operating system—and how to deal with them. Written by two white hat hackers, this book is aimed at making vital information known so that you can find ways to secure your Mac OS X systems, and examines the sorts of attacks that are prevented by Leopard’s security defences, what attacks are, and how to best handle those weaknesses.

Read More

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

        

The Art of Exploitation, Second 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.

Read More

Hacking Exposed Web Applications

3rd Edition, Web Application Security Secrets & Solutions

Protect your Web applications from malicious attacks by mastering the weapons and thought processes of today's hacker. Written by recognized security practitioners and thought leaders, Hacking Exposed Web Applications, Third Edition is fully updated to cover new infiltration methods and countermeasures. Find out how to reinforce authentication and authorization, plug holes in Firefox and IE, reinforce against injection attacks, and secure Web 2.0 features. Integrating security into the Web development lifecycle (SDL) and into the broader enterprise information security program is also covered in this comprehensive resource

• Get full details on the hacker's footprinting, scanning, and profiling tools, including SHODAN, Maltego, and OWASP DirBuster

• See new exploits of popular platforms like Sun Java System Web Server and Oracle WebLogic in operation
• Understand how attackers defeat commonly used Web authentication technologies
• See how real-world session attacks leak sensitive data and how to fortify your applications
• Learn the most devastating methods used in today's hacks, including SQL injection, XSS, XSRF, phishing, and XML injection techniques
• Find and fix vulnerabilities in ASP.NET, PHP, and J2EE execution environments
• Safety deploy XML, social networking, cloud computing, and Web 2.0 services
• Defend against RIA, Ajax, UGC, and browser-based, client-side exploits

Implement scalable threat modeling, code review, application scanning, fuzzing, and security testing procedures

User Review

Gives good basic ideas how to test some applications-- Georgi - Goodreads

Read More

The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing

 Second Edition: Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Made Easy

The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing Second Edition. serves as an introduction to the steps required to complete a penetration test or perform an ethical hack from beginning to end. No prior hacking experience is needed. You will learn how to properly utilize and interpret the results of modern day hacking tools, which are required to complete a penetration test. Tool coverage includes Backtrack and Kali Linux, Google reconnaissance, MetaGooFil, DNS interrogation, Nmap, Nessus, Metasploit, the Social Engineer Toolkit (SET) , w3af, Netcat, post exploitation tactics, the Hacker Defender rootkit, and more.
 

The book provides a simple and clean explanation of how to effectively utilize the tools and introduces a four-step methodology for conducting a penetration test or hack. You will be provided with the know-how required to jump start your career or gain a better understanding of offensive security. The book walks through each of the steps and tools in a structured, orderly manner, allowing readers to understand how the output from each tool can be fully utilized in the subsequent phases of the penetration test. This process allows readers to clearly see how the tools and phases function and relate.

· 

• The second edition includes updated information covering Kali Linux as well as focusing on the seminal tools required to complete a penetration test 
• New tools added including the Social Engineer Toolkit, Meterpreter, w3af and more!
• Each chapter contains hands-on examples and exercises that are designed to teach you how to interpret the results and utilize those results in later phases

Written by an author who works in the field as a Penetration Tester and who teaches Offensive Security, Penetration Testing, and Ethical Hacking, and Exploitation classes at Dakota State University

User Review

Although this book is ideal for beginners, most security professionals will have been involved with penetration testing during some point in their career. This book is thus an excellent refresher for those of us who fondly recall Nmap, Nessus and Netcat as being the tools of choice for both whitehat and blackhat hackers, but have long-since forgotten the full command-line syntax and would benefit from a refresh. Patrick Engebretson gets the reader involved in the art of hacking from page one and makes this book a fascinating and productive read."--Best Hacking and Pen Testing Books in InfoSecReviews Book Awards

Read More

Hackers Underground Hanbook

Learn How to Hack and What It Takes to Crack Even the Most Secure Systems

The information given in this underground handbook will put you into a hacker's mindset and teach you all of the hacker's secret ways. The Hacker's Underground Handbook is for the people out there that wish to get into the the amazing field of hacking. It introduces you to many topics like programming, Linux, password cracking, network hacking, Windows hacking, wireless hacking, web hacking and malware. Each topic is introduced with an easy to follow, real-world example. The book is written in simple language and assumes the reader is a complete beginner.

User Review

"Although this book is ideal for beginners, most security professionals will have been involved with penetration testing during some point in their career. This book is thus an excellent refresher for those of us who fondly recall Nmap, Nessus and Netcat as being the tools of choice for both whitehat and blackhat hackers, but have long-since forgotten the full command-line syntax and would benefit from a refresh. Patrick Engebretson gets the reader involved in the art of hacking from page one and makes this book a fascinating and productive read."--Best Hacking and Pen Testing Books in InfoSecReviews Book Awards

About The Author

David has been in the security/hacking scene for many years. He currently runs a hacking blog and podcast at http://www.MrCracker.com

Read More