Top 20 penetration testing books ever published

Expertise level required: beginner

I would like to start this list with the best web application penetration testing book. This book is well structured and can be used by either an expert or a beginner. What makes it suitable for a beginner is a fact that it first starts with explaining some basic aspects of how the web actually works.

Most new penetration testers tend to go straight to read about vulnerabilities and the way to exploit them, which is the wrong methodology to start in this field. Understanding those basic aspects of the web, help you quickly understand why each vulnerability exists and how it can be fixed.

The book also covers most of the attacks that can be performed on components that can be found in any web application:

• client side controls attacks
• Authentication attacks
• Session management attacks
• Access controls attacks
• Data stores attacks
• Back end attacks
• Application logic attack

The book is simply awesome and I highly encourage anyone who wants to start in this field or want to enhance his skills to take a look at it. The book really covers all the aspects of a web application penetration test.

Expertise level required: Expert

RTFM is a must-have book for any penetration tester. This book gives really the juice of commands that you may need in every step of the penetrations testing.

RTFM is a kind of command dictionary for penetration testers.

The command is listed in this book in categories, like commands for windows, for web, for network … etc. The book also gives some tricks that can be performed during a penetration test.

Unfortunately, the only thing that I personally missed in this book is the fact that no detailed explanation of what each command does and when it can be used.

Expertise level required: Intermediate

For those who are more interested in enhancing their skills in network and system penetration testing, I highly encourage them to take a look at this book.

The book is not designed for beginners as most of the aspects and techniques discussed in the book are new and advanced ones. In addition, the book writer supposes that the reader already knows and masters basic aspects of networking and system admin. Therefore, no technological aspect has been explained in the book.

A lot of techniques discussed in the book are very interesting and a lot of penetration tester does not know about it. Unfortunately, the book has reserved a small part for web application vulnerabilities.

Expertise level required: beginners

For penetration testing in general I’ve said that it is not a mature field compared to programming, then IoT penetration testing is even worst. There is a small number of books and courses about how to do IoT penetration testing and this book is one of them.

IoT Penetration testing is a rising need in the cyber security auditing market. A lot of companies have started to include such tests in their annual budget.

This book is one of the most popular IoT penetration testing books with a lot of new concepts and attacks that can be performed against connected devices. However, this book is a little bit small compared to the preview one, with a limited number of attacks and concepts.

However, for those who want to start in this field, this book can be a good start. In addition, the book explains in detail the used methodology to perform IoT penetration testing which makes it very suitable for new penetration testers.

Expertise level required: beginners

If you are looking for someone to guide you along the process of learning and getting a job on penetration testing, then this book is definitely for you. The book doesn’t give any barley any technical information about penetration testing.

However, the writers have tried to make a sort of reference for anyone that wants to start in this field. The book shows you exactly what you need in terms of:

• Skills
• Education
• Certification
• Experience

To find a real job.

The book also walks you through the process of how to build your own lab to practice penetration testing in a safe and legal place.

Expertise level required: beginners

As the title of the book mention, this book is just an introduction to the world of penetration testing. The book gives some information about each penetration testing type:

• Web application penetration testing
• Network penetration testing
• Mobile penetration testing
• Exploit development

The book is a little bit old as it was published in 2014 and a lot of new techniques were discovered and retired from that date till now.

For beginners that book could still be useful to learn the process and some old but gold techniques.

Expertise level required: Intermediate

This is another IoT penetration testing book for everyone who wants to get into this rising field. This book is a little bit old compared with the previous one, but basically the same volume.

Both books offer basically the same information in terms of attack techniques with the same structure.

I think both books are good and offer basically the same thing. However, if I was going to buy one of them I would choose the first one as it is the most recent, and may have updated information about the small details (tools and configuration problems…).

Expertise level required: Expert

Another discipline that you may find in the market is hardware penetration testing. To be honest, this field is very rare for now but if you are interested this book will give you the basics to start in this field. The book covers also the requirements in terms of programming languages you may need to learn to practice this field so that you don’t need to check any other programming book.

In addition, the book gives you an idea about the hardware component and how you can identify them. The book also walks you through the process of creating a safe lab where you can practice this skill without any problems which is the best thing you can have in a penetration testing book.

Expertise level required: Intermediate

Attacking network protocols is one of the advanced subjects in penetration testing. It is very similar to the regular system exploit development process but with small differentiation in terms of tools and techniques.

This book will walk you through the process of capturing and analyzing the network traffic to identify potential attack surfaces and vulnerabilities and then create an exploit for them.

What makes this book a good choice for even beginners in this field, is the fact that it explains all the network prerequisites so that you can easily understand the attack techniques and exploitations.

Expertise level required: beginner

I always encourage my students or anyone who ask me how he can start in the field of penetration testing, to go after certification. CEH is one of those best certifications for beginners.

This book is a sort of summary to prepare for this certification. The book covers all the aspects presented in the main certification with some quizzes to prepare for the CEH exam.

The CEH certification covers a lot of penetration testing domains and gives a lot of technical information. However, if you are already a penetration tester or at least you have the basic knowledge in penetration testing and you want to learn new technical and modern stuff then this certification and book is not a good choice for you. In this situation, it is better to go after some more technical certifications like OSCP and OSCE.

However, each time the CEH certification makes a new update to its content, the book also produces a new version to cover that.

Expertise level required: Expert

Red team attacks simulation is a sort of new generation of penetration testing that requires more experience and expertise in many domains.

The main difference between the red team and penetration testing resides in the fact that a red team exercise is made to test the time to detect/respond of the blue team. Contrarily to penetration testing test that tries to identify potential weaknesses in a network.

This book is designed for team leaders and project managers or even decision-makers that want to build a red team. The book explains the steps required to do that will giving the details of how that team will work and organize its missions. In addition, a small amount of technical information are also discussed in the book.

Expertise level required: Expert

The advanced penetration testing book is one of the best expert tools ever made. The book explains in detail some attack scenarios that were performed against each type of organization and how they were able to gain access.

This type of real-world example helps the penetration tester to open his mind and think outside the box when dealing with new situations.

The book gets even into the technical details and explains every step that was performed. However, some of the tools used here might be slightly different now as the book was published in 2017. But most of them will perfectly work without any problems.

Therefore, if you are looking to enhance your techniques and get ideas for new attacks scenarios, then this is the best book for you.

Expertise level required: Beginner

This book is one of the very first books I have ever read when I was just starting in the field of penetration testing. This book does not talk directly about the process of penetration testing. However, this book explains a very rare skill that even an expert penetration tester may not have which is exploit development.

Exploit development is the process of finding and creating an exploit for a specific local app. This process is very complex and will require a deep understanding of the machine internals and functionalities.

What makes this book really awesome is the pedagogical structure of the book that first walks you through the programming and network basics that you will need before starting exploit development.

Expertise level required: Beginner

Most penetration tester uses Kali Linux as an operating system to perform the tests. Therefore, knowing all the tools and the details about this system is very important to understand and get an idea about all the capabilities of your operating system.

Kali Linux is a sort of big toolbox, if you don’t read the documentation of this operation system, you may not even know all the tools that are installed on it.

The book is very small compared to the others, but it walks you through the important aspects of the operating systems and their tools.

Expertise level required: Expert

Vulnerability researching and exploit development are not specific to Linux and windows. OSX have also vulnerabilities that need to be discovered and fixed.

Unfortunately, not too many researchers get interested in iOS and MacOs as not too many people around the world use them compared to Windows and Linux. However, if you are interested to learn more about this field especially to understand the security mechanisms implemented in iOS and MacOS then this book is for you.

You should know that this book is part of a book series that cover all iOS and MacOS technical aspects:

• User aspects
• Kernel aspects
• Security mechanisms

Expertise level required: Expert

Developing exploits for windows will require a deep understanding of how the windows operation system work. In addition, understanding and mastering the security protection mechanisms are required to develop a working exploit.

This book is one of the best ones on the market and it explains every detail of the windows operating system. Reading this book will help you quickly understand system protection that makes exploit development harder.

Expertise level required: Beginner

Metasploit is one of the best tools and the most used while performing network penetration testing. It is known by his big library that makes vulnerability exploitation is very easy even for non-experienced penetration testers.

However, Metasploit is more than just a tool to exploit the vulnerability. Metasploit can also be used for exploit development and automate some tasks on it. Metasploit can also be used to bypass some types of antivirus and more.

This book will give you a global but also detailed information about all the tools and the capacities that Metasploit gives to its users.

Expertise level required: Intermediate

In so many cases when performing penetration testing, using the existing tools is not enough. Sometimes, penetration testers need to automate some tasks or build a specific tool to exploit a vulnerability in the system.

Therefore, mastering python scripting is one of the required skills to become a good penetration tester. Python libraries offer a variety of prebuilt tools and algorithms that can be used to build your personalized penetration testing tool.

This book covers many use cases of such libraries and walks you through the process of building your own tools. Tools to automate the forensics tasks, to perform a privilege escalation, or even to make a command and control point and more.

Expertise level required: Beginner

Violent Python is a similar book to black hat python in terms of the subject, but the content is very different. This book is well structured and can be used by even beginners. However, in terms of use cases, the previous book is richer and will open your eyes to some awesome uses of python.

Expertise level required: Beginner

 If you are just starting in the field of penetration testing and you want to get a global idea about what free and open-source tools are available for you to perform a penetration test, then this book is for you.

The book covers multiple tools for different use cases:

• Reconnaissance
• Scanning and enumeration
• Client side attack and weaknesses
• Hacking database services
• Web server and web application testing
• Network devices
• Wireless penetration testing

The book also walks you through the process of creating your own testing lab environment.

Unfortunately, this book is a little bit old as it was published in 2011. Therefore, a lot of modern and new tools might be missed. The good thing in this book is the detailed level and the categorization of the tools by penetration testing steps. This categorization will help new penetration testers quickly understand when each tool should be used and why.