Review of Hacking Exposed: Web 2.0 Posted

Amazon.com just posted my three star review of Hacking Exposed: Web 2.0 by Rich Cannings, Himanshu Dwivedi, Zane Lackey, et al. From the review:

I have to agree with the other 3-star reviews of Hacking Exposed: Web 2.0 (HEW2). This book just does not stand up to the competition, such as The Web Application Hacker's Handbook (TWAHH) or Web Security Testing Cook (WSTC). I knew this book was in trouble when I was already reading snippets mentioning JavaScript arrays in the introduction. That set the tone for the book: compressed, probably rushed, mixing material of differing levels of difficulty. For example, p 8 mentions using prepared statements as a defense against SQL injection. However, only a paragraph on the topic appears, with no code samples (unlike TWAHH).

Note: McGraw-Hill Osborne provided me a free review copy.

Comments

PortSwigger said…
Richard - Many thanks for your review of my book, Web App Hacker's Handbook.

I was amused to read in your Amazon review of Hacking Exposed: Web 2.0 that WAHH had 10 contributors! In fact, it had two: myself and Marcus Pinto. I would have been glad of another 8 authors, as I would have got nearly a year of my life back.

Anyway, thanks again for your positive review.
9:10 AM
Richard Bejtlich said…
Oh you're right -- I meant that SQL Injections Attack and Defense had 10, not your book. Sorry! I just posted a comment to the Amazon review for HEW2 with that correction.
9:53 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technical or pol
Read more