Humble Book Bundle: Hacking Reloaded | Hacker News Reader

Humble Book Bundle: Hacking Reloaded

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189 pointsprostoalex28 comments

I'd also be interested in someone knowledgeable weighing in on the quality of those books.

My first world problem with somewhat random information dumps like that is usually that I don't really find that it's a lack of resources holding you back from learning about certain topics, it's a lack of time. The quality of those books really has to significantly eclipse what's available on the internet (especially in terms of presentation of the material) before it seems worth buying them (to be fair, price is not a real issue here, just in principle). For instance, I don't really see the value of software reference manuals (unless you already know the software and just need the reference, but then you would likely own it already and not buy it from humble bundle, right?).

I learned more about programming from Hacking: The Art of Exploitation than from many books solely dedicated to the subject. If you're going to purchase this bundle then I highly recommend you pay the 15, it's worth it.

I have many of these books, and I can vouch for their quality. They are excellent.

Get the $15 bundle. Those are the best ones. They are a little bit out of date, but still very relevant. This is a steal!

Especially great books:

* Hacking the Art of Exploitation

* The Ida Pro Book (mostly if you use Windows)

* The Practice of Network Security Monitoring

* Practical Packet Analysis

The Metasploit book was pretty good too, and taught me a lot about Metasploit. It didn't really scratch the "deep dive" itch that I usually have though.

I have the physical copies of the first two. The IDA Pro Book, I remember ordering 8 years ago because I didn't have such persistent internet connection back then.

I have one question about the IDA Pro book: is it relevant for those of us who can only use the freeware 5.0 version?

It isn't used at my workplace and the price point seems too steep for my use (CTFs) when there are less expensive disassemblers available.

Which other disassemblers do you personally use?

I've been dabbling with Radare2 for disassembly.

Thanks, that convinced me :)

Big shoutouts to No Starch Press for these awesome book bundles. I own many of these physically but will pick this up anyway.

Thanks for the extra swag at DefCon too, Bill!

Shout-out to them for not backing down when publishing Bunnie Huang's "Hacking the Xbox." Even MIT refused to have his back.

Last time there was a bundle like this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791255) dsacco wrote an awesome comment with recommendations on which books to pick up. Any chance for another round?

The entire $15 tier is worth it, except for maybe the IDA Pro book if you have no interest in either reversing or using IDA Pro. It's mostly a software reference.

Book of PF & Absolute OpenBSD are somewhat essential if you have interest in OpenBSD, but the latter is skippable if you're a seasoned neckbeard/sysadmin.

I can't really say anything else about the lower tier books, but the 35% off coupon is quite nice.

Speaking of BSD. While the OpenBSD guys are not on the Humble charity list, The FreeBSD Foundation is, and both Peter N.M. Hansteen and Michael W. Lucas (the authors of the two of the respective books you mentioned) seem to be into FreeBSD also.

So to anyone else buying the bundle primarily for the books on OpenBSD, and who happen to support FreeBSD also:

1. Log in or create an account.

2. Go to https://www.humblebundle.com/store/select-charity/charity/21... and select it as your chosen charity to support.

3. When you go to pay for the books adjust the sliders so that you give some percentage (I chose 100%) to charity and under charity adjust the slider for The FreeBSD Foundation (once again I chose 100%).

Deal? Deal!

Good advice on setting your charity. I'd be hesitant for mass amount of people going 100% charity as this needs to be worth it for both starch and humblebundle in order to get similar deals :)

I feel like it may be a yes, but just to ask: would the OpenBSD books be of benefit for someone wanting to get started with FreeBSD? I'm guessing the answer is more likely a percentage, somewhere > 50%.

If you're using PF instead of IPFW on FreeBSD, for that book yes.

I would actually say maybe/maybe-not for the other book. MWL writes great stuff but the book is sort of specific to OpenBSD (and even a little bit outdated then: sudo vs doas). You could probably get the same out of deep reading of man pages. If you don't know your way around man or BSD init yet, then yes, pick it up.

This would be great

I would, but unfortunately I’ve not read a greater proportion of the ones in this round :)

Are you still working on the repo about cryptography research? Is it public?

The physical books from this list I own are actually great (Metaploit guide, Pentesting, Book of PF, Art of Exploitation, The IDA Pro Book, and Practical Packet Analysis). I am buying this bundle because I'd love to have PDFs of these, and I'm thinking the other books must be good if they're bundled with these others which I find useful.

FWIW, I have at least one book from each of the "levels" (dead tree versions, though) and each of those books would individually easily justify the cost.

I'm debating going ahead and picking up the entire bundle but I really really really prefer hardcopy versions of books. I personally don't care for "e-books" at all.

(Edit: the books I have are the Metasploit, pf, Hacking, and OpenBSD books.)

I'm kind of divided. I enjoy e-books when reading for pleasure, but somehow I still seem to learn better when reading from hard copies, so I end up buying a lot of reference bibliography on paper.

I'm not sure if this is a phenomenon other people have noticed?

I've noticed exactly the same thing myself. E-books are great for fun reading, but when I have to learn something I find it much easier on real paper. I don't own any kind of e-reader though so I can't speak to whether that helps or not.

I've noticed also noticed this. Currently I'm thinking of buying a cheap refillable laser printer to print out books an articles. There is something else about reading something on paper and being able to work through it (highlighting, taking notes etc.). I've tried PDF annotation programs, but none of them worked quite well.

I think the solution to this problem might be either ultra high resolution monitors or e-ink monitors.

I think it's just easier to skip around, not read it slowly.

Are you comparing paper to screen, or paper to eink?

I was comparing paper to screen. IMHO for skipping around monitors win hands-down, but for learning and extracting information paper provides a much-more focused experience.

I have no problem with linear reading books, novels , ... but this kind of books that i like to go forward and backward to reread i prefer paper ones, have same problem with recipes (cooking) ones.

I pretty much only buy dead tree books for technical reading, but occasionally the iPad Pro is more convenient -- that's why I always snap up these bundles even if I own the books already.

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