24 BEST Ethical Hacking Books For Cyber Security in 2023

Hacking is an art and even a difficult skill to learn. If you like to hack a system or server, you essentially have to be more professional than the designer of that server. And it takes a lot of steps and stability to become a professional in this field. Whether you plan to become an ethical hacker or a black hat hacker, you should know all the ideas and skills of programming to do your job.
A question that every aspiring hacker has in mind is what is the right source to get the right and adequate ability to succeed in ethical hacking? Nevertheless, the right solution is to study and practice. Although studying and learning via books may sense very old-fashioned in this technologically developed world, real knowledge is trapped just in these pages. Online tutorials and YouTube videos can present a lot of data, but you can’t neglect the power of a suitable book. There are many hack books to get you begun in the field. In this article, we list some of the most suitable ethical hacking books that can take you from beginner to advanced level. These best hacking books will be a pleasing beginning to your journey.
What Is Cybersecurity?
As the number of users, devices, and applications in modern businesses increases, along with the flood of data—much of which is sensitive or personal—the significance of cybersecurity continues to increase. The increasing volume and complexity of cyber attackers and attack methods exacerbate this issue.
Cyber security is the safety of Internet-connected systems like hardware, software, and data against cyber threats. This technique is utilized by individuals and companies to protect against unauthorized entrance to data centers and other computer systems. A robust cybersecurity method can create a suitable security posture against malicious attacks planned to access, change, delete, eliminate, or extort sensitive organization or user data. Cyber security is also very useful in stopping attacks that seek to disable or disrupt the function of a system or device.
What Is Ethical Hacking?
Ethical hacking is an authorized technique of identifying vulnerabilities in an organization’s application, system, or infrastructure and missing system security to determine possible data violations and threats on a network. Ethical hackers desire to examine a system or network to find weaknesses that malicious hackers can manipulate or eliminate. They can enhance the security footprint to better resist or deflect attacks.
The company that holds the system or network lets cybersecurity engineers conduct such activities to test the system’s securities. Therefore, unlike malicious hacking, this procedure is designed, authorized, and most importantly legal. Ethical hackers are hired by institutions to investigate vulnerabilities in their systems and networks and develop solutions to stop data violations.
Best Ethical Hacking Books for Beginner to Advanced Hackers
The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing
Author: Patrick Engebretson
Publisher : Syngress
Latest Edition: 2nd edition (August 15, 2013)
No of Pages: 225 pages

One of the best-suggested hacking books for beginners is The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing, this book familiarizes readers with every foundation a novice hacker needs to learn. Via this book, you can comprehend the performance and outcomes of recent applications utilized in hacking such as Kali Linux, Metasploit, Social Engineering Toolkit, Google Reconnaissance, and more. With this book, you will have sufficient knowledge of attacks on various types of security systems and clear guidance in executing penetration tests, and this ability will serve you well throughout your job.
The Hacker Playbook 2
Author: Peter Kim
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Latest Edition: (June 20, 2015)
No of Pages: 358 pages

If I could only select one book, this would be it. If you begin with this book as your first hacking book, it helped you a lot. It’s a good pace when you’re just starting. You will know how to set up a lab and review all the known tools that an experienced penetration tester utilizes. This book can be named the Penetration Testing Guide, while Hacker Playbook 3 can be called the Red Team Guide. The important thing is that the author treats you as a newbie, meaning he doesn’t go through the steps he thinks you know. You will love this type of book.
Penetration Testing
Author Name: Georgia Weidman
Publisher: No Starch Press
Latest Edition: 1st edition
No of Pages: 766 pages

In Penetration Testing, a Security Professional, Investigator, and Trainer is written by Georgia Weidman. This book will teach you the essential skills and strategies that every pentester demands. You will also know about mandatory lists and keywords, testing web applications for vulnerabilities, automating social engineering attacks, and bypassing antivirus software. You will collect advanced data such as how to turn access to a device into full control of the company.
The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook
Author Name: Dafydd Stuttard
Publisher: Wiley
Latest Edition: 2nd edition
No of Pages: 912 pages

The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook examines different technologies used in web applications. This book introduces you to advanced hacking attack methods designed especially for the client side. The book even covers new remoting frameworks, HTML5, cross-domain integration methods, user interface modification, frame-breaking, mixed-file attacks, and more. This book is the most recent source. On the important topic of learning, manipulating, as well as containing web applications and security flaws.
Hacking
Author Name: Gary Hall
Publisher: Independently Published
Latest Edition: December 20, 2016
No of Pages: 136 pages

Hacking: Computer Hacking, Security Testing, from the primary conceptual principles to the complex methods, which are suitable for both beginners and advanced learning. This book uses a moral hacking language that beginners can comprehend, without abandoning the sophisticated details needed to hack. This book is an ideal reference book to learn how to hack and save your devices.
Computer Hacking Beginners Guide
Author Name: Alan T. Norman
Publisher: Independently Published
No of Pages: 167 pages

This book teaches you how to save yourself from the most typical hacking attacks by knowing how to hack! To learn these methods, you can read this book, but you must stay ahead of any criminal hacker. This book covers the techniques and tools utilized by crime and ethical hackers. All the issues you will find here show you how to endanger information security and how to find cyberattacks in a system. That you try to protect it.
Hackers & Painters
Author Name: Paul Graham
Publisher: O′Reilly
Latest Edition: 1st edition
No of Pages: 272 pages

This book hacking will have a powerful effect on how we believe, how to work, how to design technology, and how to live. This book contains subjects such as the significance of software configuration, how to make wealth, Renaissance programming, digital planning, internet startups, and more.
Advanced Penetration Testing
Author Name: Wil Allsopp
Publisher: Wiley
Latest Edition: 1st edition
No of Pages: 229 pages

This book lets you combine social engineering, programming, and susceptibility exploits. This book presents a multidisciplinary method for targeting and compromising high-security conditions. Besides, it includes important methods that present a more precise picture of your system’s defenses. Custom programming samples using VBA, C, Java, JavaScript, and more.
The Hardware Hacker
Author Name: Andrew Huang
Publisher: No Starch Press
Latest Edition: 1st edition
No of Pages: 416 pages

In this book, the author conveys his experiences in building and opening hardware. This lets you create an informative and compelling career resume. This pack of articles and personal interviews covers topics linked to reverse engineering to intellectual property comparisons. It contains practices between, and community to open hardware tapestry. This is a very detailed parts book about complete manufacturing. You can solve open-source hardware problems.
BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing
Author Name: Vivek Ramachandran
Publisher: Packt Publishing
No of Pages: 220 pages

With this book, you will comprehend the concepts and techniques of conducting wireless attacks in your lab. In this book, each new attack is explained. This book presents this data in the form of a laboratory exercise with rich explanations of all the relevant steps. You will basically run different attacks in your organization.
Hacking: The Underground Guide to Computer Hacking
Author Name: Abraham K. White
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
No of Pages: 230 pages

This book presents the most useful tools for hacking and shows methods to protect your systems. This book offers instructions with the command line. This book has subjects such as hacking wireless networks, ethical hacking, and cracking encryption. In addition, you will know about other wireless hacking resources and different hacking-related topics.
Hacking the Hacker
Author Name: Roger A. Grimes
Publisher: Wiley
Latest Edition: 1st edition
No of Pages: 250 pages

This book takes you into the world of cyber security. It demonstrates to you what goes on behind the settings and instructs you to the men and women on the front lines. This book includes information from the world’s top white hat hackers, security investigators, authors, and administrators. This book introduces the people and procedures that help maintain our world safe.
Gray Hat hacking
Author Name: Daniel Regalado
Publisher: McGraw Hill
Latest Edition: 5th edition
No of Pages: 640 pages

This book will help you strengthen your network and prevent digital disaster and disasters with proven strategies from a team of security professionals. Besides, you will know the latest ethical hacking mastery and tactics. It also offers tested solutions, case studies, and more. This book helps demonstrate how hackers can access and surpass various network devices.
Hash Crack
Author Name: Joshua Picolet
Publisher: Independently Published
No of Pages: 138 pages

This book is a comprehensive reference for password recovery analysis methods, tools, and strategies. A collection of fundamental and advanced techniques for penetration testers and network security specialists. This most promising book on ethical hacking will help you to control your organization’s network security. The Hash Crack Handbook includes syntax and examples.
Mastering hacking
Author Name: Harsh Bothra
Publisher: Khanna publishing
No of Pages: 281 pages

Utilizing this book, you can learn about the contemporary penetration testing framework. It also introduces methods, vulnerability discovery, patching, etc. The purpose of this book is to present the best techniques and methodology in a simplified process. This is one of the most satisfactory hacking books that will be useful for both technical and non-technical readers.
Black Hat Python
Author Name: Justin Seitz
Publisher: No Starch Press
No of Pages: 192 pages

The next suggestion is a Python guide for hackers. Hacking is a unique kind of skill, however, all hackers like to use common tools like Burp Suite to search for different vulnerabilities. Some experienced hackers are fast enough to create their own program to hack a system by looking at its holes, and for this goal, Python is the most useful language. Because Python is so effortless to learn, its syntax is so easy, and it’s so effective that you can create a good hacking system in just a few lines of code. This is a comprehensive guide that guides you to build private Trojans, infect virtual machines, manipulate packets on the network, and can also guide you on how to address different network sniffers. It also contains your guide to successfully employing the Burp Suite web hacking tool.
Mastering Metasploit
Author Name: Nipun Jaswal
Publisher: Packt Publishing
No of Pages: 378 pages

This is the most useful hacking book for beginners who like to learn about Metasploit. If you are part of a security engineering group or if you are a penetration tester who desires to improve testing skills and like to achieve experience with Metasploit, this is the book for you. It provides a good knowledge of exploitation and gives the reader an in-depth introduction to object-oriented languages.
Blue Team Handbook: Incident Response Edition
Author Name: Don Murdoch
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
No of Pages: 164 pages

The Blue Team Handbook is also considered one of the traditional books in the area of hacking. This book is one of the key books that will remain permanently in this field due to its perfect content. This special book is based on the incident procedure and presents a clear description of the method of how attackers work, along with the various tools used to respond to an incident and the appropriate methods employed for network analysis. It also teaches you the process of analyzing Windows and Linux. It can be said that this book is full of useful strategies that can be used in dealing with conflicts. So, it’s a practical book to read whether you’re exploring unusual traffic, monitoring a rogue server, or just writing case notes.
Web Hacking 101: How to Make Money Hacking
Author Name: ABHISHEK SINGH
No of Pages: 179 pages

This book is a comprehensive guide to web hacking. This book teaches you the ethical process of investigating diverse types of security issues. But such books have restrictions because they are very professional. It has a whole chapter on noticing vulnerabilities in a website, but it doesn’t help much in real issues. The shape of the book is slightly different and consists of weaknesses that are revealed. But it will help show you very primary web vulnerabilities and get you started on your vulnerability-hunting and fundraising journey.
Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking
Author Name: Christopher Hadnagy & Paul Wilson
Publisher: Wiley
No of Pages: 416 pages

This book is a comprehensive guide to social engineering. Social engineering is a special method that represents the art of hacking people to gain access to their passwords. This book walks you through the procedure, starting with how to spot fraud and identity theft, it also has examples of different exploits where an individual is being duped so you can learn from it.
The Hackers Playbook 3
Author Name: Peter Kim
Publisher: Independently published
No of Pages: 289 pages

Hacker Playbook 3 is the successor of Hacker’s Playbook 2. All the detailed data and methods are described in the first two books and this third edition gives you useful practical step-by-step instructions on how to do it. The author has presented each step of penetration testing in detail in this book. Beginning from the basics of how to set up the environment for pen testing. As you progress through this book, you’ll understand each step of penetration testing, including exploiting web applications, social engineering methods, compromised networks, and physical attacks.
The RTFM: Red Team Field Manual
Author Name: Ben Clark
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
No of Pages: 96 pages

If you want to get started with ethical hacking, this book is one of the most pleasing hacking books to have. Ben Clarke is the author of this book and hence it is very famous. The book introduces the reader to all the basic Windows and Linux concepts and commands along with suggestions on Windows PowerShell and Python Scripts. Once you begin reading this book, you will be hooked because it will make you interested to know more and more about the marvels of computational programming.
Real-World Bug Hunting
Author Name: Peter Yaworski
Publisher: No Starch Press
No of Pages: 264 pages

This book is a pleasing read if you have a basic knowledge of the terms utilized in hacking. This book is somewhat new as it was published in 2019 and hence is up to date with all applicable information and contemporary technology. The author of the book is a security expert himself, who is determined to engage more individuals with the captivating world of hacking, and with this book he succeeds in doing so. The book is very well structured and presents a very precise analysis of all the essential terms of the hacking world such as web application security as well as bug hunting.
Nmap Network Scanning:
The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning
Author Name: Gordon Lyon
Publisher: Nmap Project
No of Pages: 464 pages

This is one of the most prevalent free hacking books that millions of users have helped from. The book’s curriculum covers network discovery, managing, and security auditing in depth and is a comprehensive authoritative direction to the Nmap security scanner. Since it begins with very basic data about port scanning, it is the most suitable hacking book for beginners. It improves knowledge of many real-world tasks and some of the strategies you can execute to solve problems such as interference detection, optimizing Nmap performance, breaking firewalls, and numerous other automated networking tasks.
FAQs
Why Learn a Hacking?
Data is one of the most invaluable assets of an organization. Keeping data safe can save the organization’s image and save a lot of capital for the organization. Many companies and government agencies need ethical hackers to guarantee their resources and systems from cybercriminals. Therefore, there are extensive options and ethical hacker jobs all over the world. Learning ethical hacking will assist you to get a job as an ethical hacker or increase your network and data security knowledge.
Which are the Best Ethical Hacking Books?
Here are some of the best ethical hacking books for beginners to advanced hackers:
- Penetration Testing – A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking
- The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws
- Hacking: The Art of Exploitation
- The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing
- The Hacker Playbook 2: Practical Guide to Penetration Testing
Why Choose Ethical Hacking as a Career?
Selecting ethical hacking as a profession has many advantages, such as the need for ethical hackers, higher pay rankings and higher ethical hacking pays, problem-solving, and more.
Which is the best book for ethical hacking for beginners?
- Black Hat Python: This book presents a solid introduction to Python programming and its benefit of ethical hacking. It covers subjects such as network hacking, password cracking, and exploit development.
- Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing: This book is a complete guide to ethical hacking and penetration testing. It covers the basics of hacking and presents useful examples to help you know how to test the security of systems and networks.
- Hacking: The Art of Exploitation: A classic book on ethical hacking, this book presents a complete introduction to the subject, covering subjects such as memory management, buffer overflows, and exploit development.
- Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing Guide: This book presents a comprehensive introduction to ethical hacking and penetration testing and covers subjects such as network and web application security, intrusion detection, and exploitation methods.
Is there any book for ethical hacking?
Yes, there are many books in this field from intermediate to advanced levels.
Can ethical hacking be self-taught?
The short answer to this question is yes. You can learn ethical hacking on your own. Yet, this is a field that needs a high level of expertise that can only come from exercise and experience.
Who is The 1 ethical hacker in the world?
Mark Eben, previously of the hacker organizations Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception, now goes by the alias Phiber Optic. He was one of the first ethical hackers to openly demonstrate the value and usefulness of ethical hacking as a business tool. On-site vulnerability inspection, reverse engineering, cyber fraud analysis, and security awareness programs are some of Abene’s core assistance. He is the renowned director of cyber security at Evian. He was previously the Senior Code Inspector at Identity Guard. He co-founded TraceVector. Besides, he worked at Major League Baseball Advanced Media as a coder, programmer, and contractor.
Conclusion:
Now that you have a great list of useful hacking books to read. Just read it for the first time! Now you have multiple choices available. You can never regret reading a suitable book and if you really like to learn more about hacking or begin your profession in this field, you should begin from the basics, and believe it or not, a book will definitely give you more correct information rather than any 10 minutes YouTube video. And obtaining the right information will make you sure of your skills and ultimately land you a suitable job position.
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