I was trying to find reviews of a couple of technical security books this weekend and found I had the option of reading fairly short reviews on Amazon, or finding disparate reviews on the web. Given that there wasn't a dedicated review site I thought I'd put this up.
Does anyone on HN have any requests for reviews or suggestions for the site?
Thanks for putting this together, I definitely enjoyed reading it.
I'd be curious to hear your take on "Hacking : The Art of Exploitation". It seems a bit dated at this point (there's a section on buffer overflows, for instance), but it clearly delves into some relatively non-shallow waters.
The idea seems great, but in first review I've read randomly I've found something that makes me wonder how valid are they - it's mentioning that Backtrack 5 R3 is now heavily out of date in the "Violent Python" review, while, according to Backtrack's website, its the latest version available.
Backtrack is about a year old which is a long time in security tool terms and people are being pushed towards Kali Linux[1], by the same authors. This isn't a pop at the author of violent python and it's a problem that affects anyone choosing a particular distro version. I should also add that to be fair, it's hard to write something like violent python in an agnostic way.
slight tangent : as a developer with little background in security, can someone help me understand the role of security specific distros in real world pen testing?
In other words, what are some specific draws to using pre-rolled distros like Backtrack or Kali instead of configuring a standard Linux distro with the necessary tools? I would be much more inclined to tweak my Arch (or whatever) image rather than futz around inside a new environment.
Thanks for this. I manage security consultants and constantly have questions from people who want to get into the field. I'm going to just send them to your site and call it a reading list.
Oh wow, thanks! I'm putting tagging together at the moment and hope to have ratings and top books by tag. Is there anything else you think I should put in to help people starting out?
[+] [-] _b8r0|13 years ago|reply
Does anyone on HN have any requests for reviews or suggestions for the site?
[+] [-] professorTuring|13 years ago|reply
It will became handy in the future.
Regards.
[+] [-] doktrin|13 years ago|reply
I'd be curious to hear your take on "Hacking : The Art of Exploitation". It seems a bit dated at this point (there's a section on buffer overflows, for instance), but it clearly delves into some relatively non-shallow waters.
[+] [-] tachion|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _b8r0|13 years ago|reply
[1] - http://www.kali.org/
__EDIT__: Perhaps I should've made this clear though, thanks for that. I'll update the review accordingly.
[+] [-] doktrin|13 years ago|reply
In other words, what are some specific draws to using pre-rolled distros like Backtrack or Kali instead of configuring a standard Linux distro with the necessary tools? I would be much more inclined to tweak my Arch (or whatever) image rather than futz around inside a new environment.
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girlvinyl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _b8r0|13 years ago|reply