Praise for Exploiting Software

“Exploiting Software highlights the most critical part of the software quality problem. As it turns out, software quality problems are a major contributing factor to computer security problems. Increasingly, companies large and small depend on software to run their businesses every day. The current approach to software quality and security taken by software companies, system integrators, and internal development organizations is like driving a car on a rainy day with worn-out tires and no air bags. In both cases, the odds are that something bad is going to happen, and there is no protection for the occupant/owner. This book will help the reader understand how to make software quality part of the design—a key change from where we are today!”

         —Tony Scott
             Chief Technology Officer, IS&S
             General Motors Corporation

“It’s about time someone wrote a book to teach the good guys what the bad guys already know. As the computer security industry matures, books like Exploiting Software have a critical role to play.”

         —Bruce Schneier
             Chief Technology Officer
             Counterpane
             Author of Beyond Fear and Secrets and Lies

“Exploiting Software cuts to the heart of the computer security problem, showing why broken software presents a clear and present danger. Getting past the ‘worm of the day’ phenomenon requires that someone other than the bad guys understands how software is attacked. This book is a wake-up call for computer security.”

         —Elinor Mills Abreu
             Reuters’ correspondent

“Police investigators study how criminals think and act. Military strategists learn about the enemy’s tactics, as well as their weapons and personnel capabilities. Similarly, information security professionals need to study their criminals and enemies, so we can tell the difference between popguns and weapons of mass destruction. This book is a significant advance in helping the ‘white hats’ understand how the ‘black hats’ operate. Through extensive examples and ‘attack patterns,’ this book helps the reader understand how attackers analyze software and use the results of the analysis to attack systems. Hoglund and McGraw explain not only how hackers attack servers, but also how malicious server operators can attack clients (and how each can protect themselves from the other). An excellent book for practicing security engineers, and an ideal book for an undergraduate class in software security.”

         —Jeremy Epstein
             Director, Product Security & Performance
             webMethods, Inc.

“A provocative and revealing book from two leading security experts and world class software exploiters, Exploiting Software enters the mind of the cleverest and wickedest crackers and shows you how they think. It illustrates general principles for breaking software, and provides you a whirlwind tour of techniques for finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities, along with detailed examples from real software exploits. Exploiting Software is essential reading for anyone responsible for placing software in a hostile environment—that is, everyone who writes or installs programs that run on the Internet.”

         —Dave Evans, Ph.D.
             Associate Professor of Computer Science
             University of Virginia

“The root cause for most of today’s Internet hacker exploits and malicious software outbreaks are buggy software and faulty security software deployment. In Exploiting Software, Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw help us in an interesting and provocative way to better defend ourselves against malicious hacker attacks on those software loopholes. The information in this book is an essential reference that needs to be understood, digested, and aggressively addressed by IT and information security professionals everywhere.”

         —Ken Cutler, CISSP, CISA
             Vice President, Curriculum Development & Professional Services,
             MIS Training Institute

“This book describes the threats to software in concrete, understandable, and frightening detail. It also discusses how to find these problems before the bad folks do. A valuable addition to every programmer’s and security person’s library!”

         —Matt Bishop, Ph.D.
             Professor of Computer Science
             University of California at Davis
             Author of Computer Security: Art and Science

“Whether we slept through software engineering classes or paid attention, those of us who build things remain responsible for achieving meaningful and measurable vulnerability reductions. If you can’t afford to stop all software manufacturing to teach your engineers how to build secure software from the ground up, you should at least increase awareness in your organization by demanding that they read Exploiting Software. This book clearly demonstrates what happens to broken software in the wild.”

         —Ron Moritz, CISSP
             Senior Vice President, Chief Security Strategist
             Computer Associates

“Exploiting Software is the most up-to-date technical treatment of software security I have seen. If you worry about software and application vulnerability, Exploiting Software is a must-read. This book gets at all the timely and important issues surrounding software security in a technical, but still highly readable and engaging, way. Hoglund and McGraw have done an excellent job of picking out the major ideas in software exploit and nicely organizing them to make sense of the software security jungle.”

         —George Cybenko, Ph.D.
             Dorothy and Walter Gramm Professor of Engineering, Dartmouth
             Founding Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Security and Privacy

“This is a seductive book. It starts with a simple story, telling about hacks and cracks. It draws you in with anecdotes, but builds from there. In a few chapters you find yourself deep in the intimate details of software security. It is the rare technical book that is a readable and enjoyable primer but has the substance to remain on your shelf as a reference. Wonderful stuff.”

         —Craig Miller, Ph.D.
             Chief Technology Officer for North America
             Dimension Data

“It’s hard to protect yourself if you don’t know what you’re up against. This book has the details you need to know about how attackers find software holes and exploit them—details that will help you secure your own systems.”

         —Ed Felten, Ph.D.
             Professor of Computer Science
             Princeton University

“If you worry about software and application vulnerability, Exploiting Software is a must-read. This book gets at all the timely and important issues surrounding software security in a technical, but still highly readable and engaging way.”
         —George Cybenko, Ph.D.
             Dorothy and Walter Gramm Professor of Engineering, Dartmouth
             Founding Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine

“Exploiting Software is the best treatment of any kind that I have seen on the topic of software vulnerabilities.”
         —From the Foreword by Aviel D. Rubin
             Associate Professor, Computer Science
             Technical Director, Information Security Institute, Johns Hopkins University

How does software break? How do attackers make software break on purpose? Why are firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and antivirus software not keeping out the bad guys? What tools can be used to break software? This book provides the answers.

Exploiting Software is loaded with examples of real attacks, attack patterns, tools, and techniques used by bad guys to break software. If you want to protect your software from attack, you must first learn how real attacks are really carried out.

This must-have book may shock you--and it will certainly educate you.Getting beyond the script kiddie treatment found in many hacking books, you will learn about

• Why software exploit will continue to be a serious problem

• When network security mechanisms do not work

• Attack patterns

• Reverse engineering

• Classic attacks against server software

• Surprising attacks against client software

• Techniques for crafting malicious input

• The technical details of buffer overflows

• Rootkits

Exploiting Software is filled with the tools, concepts, and knowledge necessary to break software.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 29 Ratings

Why we use it for a graduate class - 2005-08-19
Reviewer Rating:
The one major strength of this book, from a computer science viewpoint, is its emphasis on "attack patterns". This systemization of these issues really differentiates this book from many of its competitors (which tend to be either the latest 500 hacks or descriptions of standards). Put simply CS is the study of algorithms, and this book fits nicely into that tradition.

Want to fix things instead of break them? - 2006-03-03
Reviewer Rating:
One of the authors here.

Thinking carefully about how things break is a good idea. You should read this book and you should also read the Shellcoder's Handbook" by Litchfield et al. Pretend security nonsense crumbles under the weight of real attacks.

However, if you're interested in fixing the problem, get "Software Security: Building Security In". It's time to DO software security!

On the other hand, if you're looking for the ultimate weapon in the attacker's toolkit, go get "Rootkits."

In the end, the only smart move is a combo package of "think like and attacker" and "build like a pro." For your best all around bargain, get "The Software Security Library."

Not as good as other works by these great authors, but still valuable - 2007-07-03
Reviewer Rating:
I read Exploiting Software (ES) last year but realized I hadn't reviewed it yet. Having read other books by these authors, like McGraw's Software Security and Hoglund's Rootkits, I realized ES was not as good as those newer books. At the time ES was published (2004) it continued to define the software exploitation genre begun in Building Secure Software. However, I don't think it's necessary to pay close attention to ES when newer books by McGraw and Hoglund are now available.

On the positive side, I appreciate three aspects of ES. First, I like the attention paid to attack patterns. This concept makes sense and should be used by other authors who want to describe a means to exploit a target. Second, I am impressed that ES features a whole chapter (5) on attacking client software. When ES was published, client-side attacks were just becoming popular. Discussing this problem shows great insights on the part of the authors. Third, several of the examples in ES are great case studies on exploiting software. When explained in sufficient detail they make for educational reading.

On the down side, I agree with several other reviewers that the book seems somewhat erratic. Attack patterns that are two sentences long are probably candidates for inclusion in a chart, not listed in the main text. I don't think the predictions found in ch 1 were necessary, and I think some of the criticism of detection methods in ch 6 border on the ignorant. I agree that perfect detection is impossible, but there are plenty of methods that work in the real world. They may not be real-time, but no intruder is perfectly stealthy in all aspects of an attack.

Regarding chapters 7 and 8, on buffer overflows and rootkits -- at 170 pages, those could almost have been their own book. The material doesn't seem to match the rest of the book, and it's obviously Hoglund's work. Add in a like-minded chapter on reverse engineering (3) at 74 pages and you definitely have a stand-alone book!

It's probably sufficient to read Building Secure Software, Software Security, and Rookits if you like the McGraw/Hoglund approach to attacking and defending software. Take a quick look at the attack pattern material to get a feel for that concept.

Should read if ... - 2008-06-15
Reviewer Rating:
Nutshell review - You should read this book if you have anything to do with building software, from developer to development manager. Hoglund and McGraw are required reading and this is a very decent book looking into how and why software breaks.

Don't let the black hat on the cover fool you... - 2008-06-09
Reviewer Rating:
This book is a great review of software security and deserves to be on any security professional's bookshelf. The chapter on Rootkits (Chapter 8) is well worth the price of the book. While the book isn't too long (at just over 400 pages) it does deliver in a concise, easy to read format that makes the book a rewarding read.

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