This post describes 5 Books for Women in Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security. Being a woman and being curious about learning how to hack stuff is Amazing. No Jokes! You know how every hacking movie, CIA movies , Crime, and Action movies try hard to portray a hacker. Guy in a black hood or an all black outfit hitting multiple keys at a time from his Kali Console. A Fat Geeky looking Dude who eats pizza and drinks coffee all day and night while staring at his screen. Then Finally came the breath of fresh air to our TV screens with a whole new set of Female whiz and hackers. Starting with Felicity (female IT security bad-ass character in movie show “Arrow”). Followed by Darlene from the most popular and most recent hacker movie show “Mr Robot”. In reality they are absolutely normal people like you and i. They are just people who ensure that the world is a safe place for the rest of the world. And lastly have a knack for learning and improving their skills.
In as much as the world tries to show how awesome it is to break into stuff and gain access to certain information which on a normal day, you wouldn’t have authorization to. Hacking still remains a big deal which makes it a two way deal: Hacking the right way or Hacking the Illegal way which leads to almost 10 years jail term if caught depending on your side of the continent.
“An ethical hacker is a person who hacks into a computer network in order to test or evaluate its security, rather than with malicious or criminal intent.”
The ethical hacker is a skilled specialist, usually referred to as the “white hats.” Compared to the non-ethical hacker or “black hats” or “crackers”. The crackers penetrate into a computer system and exploit it for their private gain or mischief. The “white hats” consider and point out the vulnerabilities of system software, and recommend system changes. Also, the amazing thing about ethical hackers is that they have the opportunity to play both characters. That is to say, they learn to play the black offensive, white offensive as well playing defensive. But what’s all these talk without action.
“You give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day. You teach him to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime.”
Therefore, We decided to put together some of the best books out there in Ethical Hacking and Penetration testing. These books we have used whilst kick starting our career in info-sec which has proven to be quite resourceful. Needless to say, these books are just our opinions. Feel free to leave your recommendations, or suggestions in the comment section below.
Top 5 Books for Women in Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security
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- The Hacker Playbook 2: Practical Guide to Penetration Testing: The Hacker Playbook made it to the first of our list due to its broad and vast topic coverage. From pentesting to hacking tutorials, we believe It’s a greatly informative book and gives step-by-step guides. There are also hands on examples and helpful advice from experts. Apart from that, It also focuses on advanced topics such as attacking networks, privilege escalation and evading antiviruses. It is completely dedicated to penetration testing methods in an ethical manner, which is really helpful for newbies.
- The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing: This i think could probably be the best hacking book for beginners because it covers range of chapters on penetration testing and instructs you How to perform an ethical hack from very basic. Readers learn to use Kali Linux with ease and what’s more fascinating is that it focuses heavily on practical tools. These tools include tools usage like Nessus, Nmap, Metasploit, SET, w3af, Netcat, MetaGooFil etc. So I’d say, “Go for it without any second thought.”
- Hacking: The Art of Exploitation: This is considered to be greatest hacking book of all time and a must read for every hacker. It is very unique in every term. Unlike others it spends more time explaining technical foundation and How things work from inside.
- Black Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Pentesters: You may know the importance of programming languages for hackers especially Python. One of the most useful and essential language for hackers because it creates powerful hacking tools or scripts. This book teaches you Python programming and explores the darker side of its capabilities. Gets you into awesome things like creating stealthy trojans, extending Burp-Suite, and more.
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Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker’s Handbook, Third Edition details the most recent vulnerabilities and remedies along with legal disclosure methods. Learn from the experts how hackers target systems and write malicious code. Also, Malware analysis, penetration testing, and Web security are also covered.
