blackMORE Ops Learn one trick a day ….
So you want to be pentester? A common question is where do you start? This post gives you a list of recommended books for Pentesters. It is useful for any Linux security administrators and aspiring pentesters or anyone who is interested to learn the basic workings of Penetration test with Linux. As I write mostly about Kali Linux, I’ve focused on Kali Linux in this list, but this list if not limited to Kali Linux only, it is a recommended set of list for anyone who wants to be a Linux security administrator or penetration tester.
This list and these recommended books will benefit any information security professionals of all levels, hackers, systems administrators, network administrators, and beginning and intermediate professional pen testers, as well as students majoring in information security. All books are available in Amazon, I’ve only listed the ones with good ratings, but there are more books available.. so read some reviews before you go on and buy yourself one.
List of recommended books for pentesters
A Bug Hunter’s Diary: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Software Security [Paperback]by Tobias Klein |
UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (4th Edition) [Paperback]by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein , Ben Whaley |
The Hacker Playbook: Practical Guide To Penetration Testing [Kindle Edition]by Peter Kim (Author) |
Fuzzing: Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery [Paperback]by Michael Sutton , Adam Greene, Pedram Amini |
Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide [Paperback]by David Kennedy , Jim O’Gorman , Devon Kearns , Mati Aharoni |
The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws [Paperback]by Dafydd Stuttard , Marcus Pinto |
The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing, Second Edition: Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Made Easy [Paperback]by Patrick Engebretson |
Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel Paperbackby Greg Hoglund (Author), Jamie Butler (Author) |
Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition [Paperback]by Jon Erickson |
Metasploit Toolkit for Penetration Testing, Exploit Development, and Vulnerability Research [Paperback]by David Maynor , Thomas Wilhelm |
Penetration Tester’s Open Source Toolkit, Vol. 2 Paperbackby Jeremy Faircloth (Author), Chris Hurley (Author), Jesse Varsalone (Author) |
The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws [Paperback]by Dafydd Stuttard , Marcus Pinto |
CWSP Certified Wireless Security Professional Official Study Guide (Exam PW0-200), Second Edition [Paperback]by Tom Carpenter , Grant Moerschel , Richard Dreger |
CWNA Certified Wireless Network Administrator Official Study Guide (Exam PW0-100), Fourth Edition (Certification Press) [Paperback]by Tom Carpenter , Joel Barrett |
Hope this list comes in handy and help those who would like to learn. These recommended books will introduce you to the most current tools for Linux pen testing. You will learn how to configure networking components, storage devices and system services such as DHCP and web services along with using some common tools used in Kali Linux aka Linux that are used for Pentest these days. Good Luck.
thanks i really liked the “Hacking – The Art of Exploitation_2nd Ed” it is so simple foor beginners :)
Are these books you have actually read or own and recommend? Or are you just saving folks a google search? It would be much more interesting to know which ones you actually have benefited from and can recommend.
Hi James,
I’ve got two books from this list personally. UNIX and Linux System Administration (I guess everyone got one) and The Hacker Playbook. My friends got few others (MetaSploit, Rootkits, BruteForce ) from this list which I borrowed from time to time. This list is a combination of the books I’ve read, my friends recommended and I own .. Feel free to recommend more or comment on these so that we can make it a better list. As you can see, youssefsenpai vetted one… this list can only be better than it already is. Cheers,
-BMO
i think “The Rootkit Arsenal: Escape and Evasion in the Dark Corners of the System” is also a must have book for penetration testers
i was able to download the pdf of all of the books listed here except these three. not to bad though. i do plan on buying the ones i find most useful, paperbacks are harder to lose or misplace then a file on a computer imho
Penetration Tester’s Open Source Toolkit, Vol. 2
CWNA Certified Wireless Network Administrator Official Study Guide (Exam PW0-100), Fourth Edition (Certification Press)
CWSP Certified Wireless Security Professional Official Study Guide (Exam PW0-200), Second Edition
also found a book that might interest some people, i have not read it yet but thought id share it anyway, and get feed back from someone who may have read it. the book is called
Professional Penetration Testing- Creating and Operating a Formal Hacking Lab.
Thanks mate, I am sure readers will find those suggestions useful.