Review of Hacking Exposed: Wireless, 2nd Ed Posted

Amazon.com just posted my five star review of Hacking Exposed: Wireless, 2nd Ed by Johnny Cache, Joshua Wright and Vincent Liu. From the review:

I reviewed the first edition of Hacking Exposed: Wireless (HEW) in May 2007, and offered four stars. Three years later I can confidently say that Hacking Exposed: Wireless, 2nd Ed (HEW2) is a solid five star book. After reading my 2007 review, I believe the authors took my suggestions seriously, and those of other reviewers, and produced HEW2, the best book on wireless security available. If you want to understand wireless -- and not just 802.11, but also Bluetooth, ZigBee, and DECT -- HEW2 is the book for you.

I forgot to mention in my review that this new edition appears to be a substantial rewrite, not a minor editing of old chapters! I didn't do a chapter-by-chapter comparison. I did read the whole book, which the publisher provided as a review copy.

Comments

Mark Kelly said…
Richard,
I always have thought highly of the Hacking Exposed Series in general very high quality work that actually teaches how vs. theory. I am curious if you'd recommend an upgrade even if someone has the old edition since sometimes I found that the version upgrades were not sufficient to recommend a repurchase.

I am curious how if you managed to get your review copy from a previously existing relationship with the author or some other arrangement.

Best Regards
Mark
9:17 PM
Richard Bejtlich said…
Hi Mark,

In this case I would definitely recommend the upgrade. Wireless continues to evolve and this book is much different compared to the first edition. Like you said, sometimes other books (the original HE v4 vs v5 vs v6 etc.) don't change too much. This one is worthy of buying.

The authors offered me a review copy.
9:49 AM
John said…
I don't know guys. Lately, Richard's been handing out five-star reviews like candy. If he doesn't reign it in soon, he'll have all the credibility of that guy from Fox whose endorsements are on all the lousy movies.
2:56 PM
Richard Bejtlich said…
John, are you kidding? Check out a few reviews back. Incidentally I'm not the type of person who TRIES to read bad books, like someone who sits through bad movies because his job is to review all movies. I try to find good books, and if I pick a bad one I'll let you know.
9:16 PM
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 technica...
Read more