The art of exploitation - my review#
As a computer science student i always try different areas to see what sticks to me and makes me passionate about it, this book is how it all started for me, it may be dated released over a decade ago, but to me it felt like a “zero to hero” manual in the world of binary exploitation and vulnerabilty research, it covers the basics, the theory, like nothing other source i saw online, although it may be a bit dry, but a little bit of persistence goes a long way, anyways, lets start with what you actually learn.
Prequisites#
having the following skills will help you power through this book with little to no interrupts:
- a grasp of any assembly language (arm/mips/x86)
- basic proficency in C
- linux cli basics
What you learn#
- Spotting and mitigating vulnerabillities in C programs
- using a debugger such as GDB
- exploiting aged but core vulnerabilites like buffer overflows
- code injection and shellcoding
- basic networking and cryptography
final verdict#
Since its a very old book i recommend supplementing it with more modern resources such as LiveOverflow’s series on binexp and solving CTFs related to pwn and reversing (pwnable.kr, pwncollege .. ).
hope you enjoyed this review, until my next book.
