Hackers Beware starts with a roadmap of the various areas of hacking but quickly delves into the details of how specific attacks work and how to protect against them. Since most attacks we hear about either occur or are perceived to come from hackers, people are very interested "in how they do that" - the techniques hackers use to break into systems. Hackers Beware is unique in that it gives specific exploits, exactly how they work and how to protect against them. This book will help readers understand what security threats they are up against and what they need to do to protect against them. Some books cover this from a high level but do not get into the details of specific exploits and cover it in a case by case fashion. This book will cover the complete picture. It will not only describe how an exploit works but present the signature of the attack, what to look for on a network and how to protect against it.

Cole's didactic style is largely conversational, embracing the fact that most computer exploits can be conveyed as stories about what hackers want and the steps they take to achieve their goals. He punctuates his prose passages with line drawings that clarify what gets passed among the machines involved in an attack, and pauses frequently to show programs' user interfaces and passages from their logs. Cole explains all the jargon he uses--a characteristic that alone distinguishes this book from many of its competitors. --David Wall

Topics covered: What motivates black-hat hackers, and the technical means they use to go about satisfying their ambitions. General attack strategies--spoofing, password cracking, social engineering, and buffer overflows, among others--are explained, and the tools used to carry them out are catalogued. The same goes for defensive tools and practices.