To a dedicated security auditer, remote machines can give away a world of information that aids them in subsequent attacks. Often times administrators are not aware of just how much information is shared out. The ability to pick this information out and use it to your advantage can often make the difference between gaining access and complete failure. System Hacking goes into the specific details of breaking into remote hosts. Covering Windows, Novell and Unix, the authors cover a wide variety of methods, many of which are lost to newcomers to security auditing.
Readers learn the nuances of brute force attacks, buffer overflows, symlink attacks and a lot more.
Network Hacking looks at the bigger picture and considers multiple machines as the intended target. Another critical appliance in any sensitive network is the Firewall. The final chapter in this section gives several ways to poke holes in the firewall so that it no longer acts as a complete dead end for you. With more and more corporations using remote access software, they are finding it is leaving them wide open to attacks. These software packages are often a security auditers dream.