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Title: Hacker's Challenge 2: Test Your Network Security & Forensic Skills by Mike Schiffman, Bill Pennington, David Pollino, Adam J. O'Donnell ISBN: 0-07-222630-7 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 18 December, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Always entertaining, always educational
Comment: I read and reviewed the original "Hacker's Challenge" in Nov 01, and gave that book four stars. Mike Schiffman and crew have recaptured the magic and published another winner: "Hacker's Challenge 2" (HC2). This is the sort of book that needs to be used when interviewing new hires or promoting technical staff. If the candidate has read the book and knows the answers to the challenges, she at least demonstrates her commitment to learning, as well as an ability to remember what she reads. If she can solve the challenges without having read the book, she shows a higher level of skill. If she has no clue how to respond to the challenges, you can move on to the next candidate.
The majority of HC2 involves three subjects. Challenges 1,3,7, and 16 revolve around wireless insecurities. Challenges 2,5,6,15, and 17 discuss network-based attacks. Solving the mysteries of challenges 4,11,12,14,18, and 19 require log analysis. A few other issues are sprinkled through the text: social engineering (ch. 8), host-based digital forensics (ch. 9), a man-in-the-middle attack against SSH (ch. 13), and a crafty buffer overflow tutorial (ch. 10). None of the material struck me as being exceptionally original, although this accurately reflects the sorts of cases handled by most consultants! I was impressed by the level of explanation offered by challenge 17, where vulnerabilities associated with VLAN 1 were exposed.
HC2 has a few weaknesses. I was sorry to see Peter Lemonjello fired in challenge 5, but he appeared to strike again in challenge 11. Pages 126-8 featured some of the oddest techno-babble in print, offering obscure references to Rabindranath Tagore and condescending dialogue with a tech support staffer. I've given up on seeing Mike Schiffman correctly abbreviate the Air Force Information Warfare Center as "AFIWC" in his biography. His use of "AFWIC" must refer to the UN's AFrican Women In Crisis program and not the talk he gave to the AFIWC in Apr 99!
HC2 is the first must-buy of 2003, but it leaves some room for improvement. Future editions should provide greater details in the solutions, like explanations of the fields in various firewall logs. I'd also like to see the author's names on the challenges, as appeared in the first HC book. The bottom line is that HC2 is a fast read that will entertain, and more importantly, educate.
Rating: 4
Summary: Better than the 1st...
Comment: Mike Schiffman has always been a really funny guy (see what he's written in phrack loopback for examples) so I was really dissappointed with the lack of humour in the first volume of the Hackers Challenge series. That has gotten better in the second volume. There is a lot more humor in this one.
Aside from that it reads just like the first volume and is just as good in almost every way. But for the fact that in this volume the editors decided not to tell you which author wrote which chapter which I would have like to have known.
Rating: 5
Summary: PURE FUN - IT'S A GEM
Comment: Amazon auto-recommended this book to me when I was buying another book. I bought it allthough I was shure that this will be anotherone of the books you buy, leaf through for 30 minutes and then burry in your bookshelf forever ...
The book arrived on friday - helloween. I decided to "leaf it quickly through" before diving into the helloween chaos in my city ... Now it is sunday ... I have skipped helloween completely and sucked up the book completely, played a bit with the new knowledge in my LAN and definitely had a lot of fun.
I'm nor a hacker nor a sysadmin, just a programmer. But the challenges are easy enough for me (As a programmer I'm not so experienced in networking ...). Not too easy to be boring, not to hard to be "work". You can compare it better to a funny short-story-book than to a laborious brain-teaser-book. I learned a lot and had much fun. It is the first IT-book I ever read completely from the beginning to the end. Have you ever been laughing loudly when reading an IT-book ? I did often during this wheekend :) And additionaly I _did_ learn a lot. It's magic ...
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Title: Hacker's Challenge : Test Your Incident Response Skills Using 20 Scenarios by Mike Schiffman ISBN: 0072193840 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 18 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions, Fourth Edition (Hacking Exposed) by Stuart McClure, Joel Scambray, George Kurtz ISBN: 0072227427 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
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Title: Hackers Beware: The Ultimate Guide to Network Security by Eric Cole ISBN: 0735710090 Publisher: Que Pub. Date: 13 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Anti-Hacker Tool Kit by Keith Jones, Mike Shema, Bradley Johnson ISBN: 0072222824 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 25 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $59.99 |
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Title: Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box by Ryan Russell, Ido Dubrawsky, FX, Joe Grand, Tim Mullen ISBN: 1931836876 Publisher: Syngress Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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