OK as reference

While reviewing the second edition of the AntiHacker Toolkit, I managed to keep my general disdain towards tool books (see my review for a first edition) in check. Thus, I managed to find the book more valuable than the first edition.

I liked that the authors framed the book as being "about tools" and not "about security". The book will not teach you security concepts, but rather what the current tools are and (to some extent) how to use them.

The book offers coverage of Windows and UNIX, attack and defense (and investigation) tools. As the authors state, it does indeed make a good companion for "Incident Response" by providing a bit more details on the tools. Reading up on the methodologies before starting on the tools is a good idea.

I also liked that they highlighted the changes and new material added for the second edition. However, if the book offers to cover a laundry list of tools, some omissions look pretty suspicious. Where is Bastille in "Host Hardening"? Where is "scanrand" in scanners? Some tools (such as Nessus and Snort as well as commercial scanners) would have justified a bit more details (due to their relative complexity and diverse functionality).

The book will make a valuable addition to a library of a security professional. Although most or even all of the information there is available online after some googling, having it in one place is not a bad idea.

Anton Chuvakin, Ph.D., GCIA, GCIH is a Senior Security Analyst with a major security information management company. He is the author of the book "Security Warrior" (O'Reilly, 2004). His areas of infosec expertise include intrusion detection, UNIX security, forensics, honeypots, etc. In his spare time, he maintains his security portal info-secure.org

Other Reviews

• Pretty good....
• A good purchase if you don't have the first edition
• OK as reference
• Hmmmm.