18 Best Cyber Security Books You Should Read In 2022-23

1. A Beginner’s Guide To Computer Hacking, Basic Security And Penetration Testing

This book on hacking is helpful for beginners. It can assist you in starting your career as an ethical hacker. It discusses various topics such as the history of hacking, different sorts of hackers, types of hacking assaults, crucial hacking tools and software, and masking IP addresses. Additionally, it discusses spoofing attacks, email address hacking, penetration testing, and mobile hacking.

What will you gain?

• Knowledge of different Hacking Tools
• Learn about various spoofing attacks and how to address them
• Common attack methodologies that are used to target networks and websites

2. Hacking: The Art Of Exploitation

Author: Jon Erickson 

This famous book is available in two editions. It highlights computer and network security. This book gives you a hacker's viewpoint on C programming. You will discover how to write programs in C and shell scripts here. This book will help you learn how to crack encrypted wireless traffic, speed up brute-force attacks and hijack TCP connections.

What will you gain?

• The topics covered by these books include how hackers work, how hackers operate, how hackers attack and how their methods can be prevented. 
• You will also learn about the various tools used by hackers in order to carry out their attacks.

Tip: Are you looking for a career in cybersecurity? Not sure where to start? Check out our handy guide to the most popular cybersecurity career path. We'll tell you what skills you need, what job roles you can expect to fill, and what salaries you can expect to earn.

3. Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide

Authors: David Kennedy, Jim O'Gorman, Devon Kearns, and Mati Aharoni

This is one of the best books for cyber security beginners guide you on how to use Metasploit framework to prevent security breaches. You will learn how to use the framework’s interfaces, module system, advanced penetration techniques, wireless attacks and social engineering attacks. So, this is a complete guide on implementing hacking skills.

What will you gain?

• Implementing security measures and protecting yourself from hackers.
• Find and exploit unmaintained, misconfigured and unpatched systems.

4. Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction To Hacking

Author: Georgia Weidman

This book emphasizes the fundamental skills and methods required by a penetration tester. You'll become familiar with the initial phases of a real assessment, such as information collection, identifying vulnerabilities, gaining access to networks, etc.

Additionally, you will learn how to bypass antivirus software, execute exploits, automate assaults and leverage the Metasploit framework to create your own Metasploit modules.

What will I gain?

• Learn how hackers use social engineering techniques to trick users into giving away their passwords and other sensitive information. 
• Learn the process of testing a computer security system to identify and exploit its vulnerabilities.

Tip: Becoming a cyber security expert can be tough, but Cybersecurity Certifications can help you start on the right track. Check out our guide on most in-demand Cybersecurity Certifications & get hired in top companies!

5. The Hacker Playbook - Practical Guide To Penetration Testing

Author: Peter Kim

This is one of the best cyber security books for beginners that introduces tactics, assaults, exploits and techniques for penetration testing. This guide will help you in improving your hacking skills and attack strategies. It also focuses on practical assaults, exploitation, original malware, persistence, and other security issues.

What will you gain?

• Learn about hacking techniques such as buffer overflows, stack smashing and SQL injection attacks.
• Learn information gathering techniques like reconnaissance and scanning for vulnerable systems.

6. Practical Malware Analysis - The Hands-On Guide To Dissecting Malicious Software

Authors: Michael Sikorski, Andrew Honig

You can analyze, debug and disassemble malicious software by learning the security analysis techniques with the help of this book. Additionally, you will learn how to set up a secure virtual environment for malware analysis, decode malware and assess the threat it has caused.

What will you gain?

• Gain a better understanding of the penetration testing process.
• Learn about the tools that are available for researching and finding vulnerabilities.

Tip: Have a look at this Ethical Hacker Tutorials Guide for Beginners to get a complete overview of how to become an ethical hacker. 

7. Social Engineering: The Science Of Human Hacking

Author: Christopher Hadnagy

This book illustrates the most popular social engineering techniques and demonstrates how they were applied in the past. Here, you will learn how to look at typical social engineering techniques, examine how social engineers can manipulate emotions and adopt successful defenses against hacking.

What will you gain?

• You will become familiar with some of the common types of attacks, such as SQL injection, XSS, LDAP injection and more.
• You will become familiar with some of the common types of vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflows and more.

8. Applied Cryptography: Protocols Algorithms & Source Code In C

Authors: Bruce Schneier

This cyber security book offers a thorough analysis of modern cryptography.

It explains how experts can encrypt and decrypt messages using cryptography. It encompasses a variety of cryptography techniques and demonstrates how to address security issues.

What will you gain?

• Learn about different cryptographic algorithms & coding techniques.
• Learn how to address security issues and identify threats.

Tip: If you are looking to up-skill. Take this 2-minute Cybersecurity DevOps Quiz to check your knowledge and stay updated with the latest updates and innovations in Cybersecurity.

9. Black Hat Python: Python Programming For Hackers & Pentesters

Author: Justin Seitz 

This book will help you learn how to infect virtual computers, write network sniffers, and make stealthy trojans. The basics of networking, online applications, and windows privilege escalation techniques are covered in this book.

What will you gain?

• Detects sandboxing and automates com­mon malware tasks, like keylogging and screenshotting.
• Escalate Windows privileges with creative process control.
• Use offensive memory forensics tricks to retrieve password hashes and inject shellcode into a virtual machine.

10. The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws

Author: Dafydd Stuttard and Marcus Pinto 

It discusses the most recent step-by-step techniques for both attacking and defending the wide variety of constantly evolving Web apps. In addition, it talks about HTML5, UI redress, hybrid file assaults and new remoting frameworks.

What will you gain?

• Learn how to overcome the new technologies and techniques aimed at defending web applications against attacks that have appeared since the previous edition.
• Discusses new remoting frameworks, HTML5, cross-domain integration techniques, UI redress, framebusting, HTTP parameter pollution, hybrid file attacks and more.

Tip: Join the  JanBask Cybersecurity Community to get career advice and the latest industry updates. 

11. Hacking: Computer Hacking, Security Testing, Penetration Testing and Basic Security

Author: John Slavio

This book contains all the fundamentals of hacking as well as the complex techniques and methods you can use to hack.  It does not exclude any of the intricate intricacies necessary for hacking, just employs simple technical language that even non-technical people can understand.

What will you gain?

• The proven steps and techniques that the best hackers use.
• Learn the intricate techniques and methods that you can use to hack.

12. Computer Hacking Beginners Guide

Author: Alan T. Norman

Beginners who want to learn how to create their first hack should read this book. It includes every method employed by both unethical and illegal hackers. You will study all there is to know about how information security may be hacked and how to spot assaults on any system. Along with several ethical hacking ideas, you will also learn about spoofing tactics, WiFi hacking, email hacking, and other related topics.

What will you gain?

• It provides a complete overview of hacking, cracking, and their effect on the world.
• You'll learn about the prerequisites for hacking, the various types of hackers, and the many kinds of hacking attacks:

13. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas From Computer Age

Author: Paul Graham

You will discover more about hackers, their driving forces, and the importance of their work. The importance of beauty in software design, wealth creation, free expression, the open-source movement, internet startups, the revival of programming languages, digital design, and many other topics are covered in this book.

What will you gain?

• Learn about hacking technologies and their implementation in different areas.
• Help you gain a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live.

Tip: Are you looking to prepare for Cybersecurity basics? Check out our quick guide to Cybersecurity Certifications & Training RoadMap.

14. Advanced Penetration Testing: Hacking The World’s Most Secure Networks

Author: Wil Allsopp

It includes several cutting-edge hacking methods for high-security settings. A complicated and extremely realistic attack simulation utilising Kali Linux and Metasploit samples is also included in the book. Additionally, you will learn how to use credentials that you have obtained to penetrate deeply into networks and operating systems.

What will you gain?

• This book shows you how to defend your high security network.
• Learn how to escalate privilege and breach networks, operating systems, and trust structures Infiltrate further using harvested credentials.

15. The Hardware Hacker: Adventures In Making and Breaking Hardware

Author: Andrew Bunnie Huang

It includes a number of interviews and personal essays on a variety of subjects, including the legality of reverse engineering, the rule of law, intellectual property policies between China and the United States, and many more. It offers a thorough analysis of the problems associated with open-source hardware and includes extremely granular sections on manufacture.

What will you gain?

• Provides a comprehensive take on hardware issues.
• Get a guide to reverse engineering, hacking, and how to make a physical attack on your own computer.

16. BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner’s Guide

Author: Vivek Ramachandran

This book was written for beginners so that they could quickly comprehend the ideas and methods used in wireless attacks. Each attack is explained in detail with detailed visuals and lab-style processes. The reader should be familiar with Backtrack and the fundamentals of wireless technology. Therefore, this book is for you if you are an IT expert or security consultant with some familiarity with Backtrack.

What will you gain?

• You can easily grasp the concepts and understand the techniques to perform wireless attacks in your lab.
• You will practically implement various attacks as you go along.

Tip: Salary is a key factor before approaching any domain. Take a quick look at this article on CISSP Salary: Check Average Salary Before You Start Learning CISSP!

17. Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker’s Handbook

Authors: Allen Harper, Ryan Linn, Stephen Sims, Michael Baucom, Huascar Tejeda, Daniel Fernandez, Moses Frost 

This book teaches you practical ethical hacking techniques that can be used to strengthen computer networks. It includes practical planning and analytical techniques for spotting a hacker's cunning tools, techniques, and strategies and how to counter them using tried-and-true solutions, testing laboratories and case studies. 

What will you gain?

• Learn the use-after-free technique used in recent zero days
• Hijack web browsers with advanced XSS attacks
• Understand ransomware and how it takes control of your desktop
• Dissect Android malware with JEB and DAD decompilers

18. Mastering Hacking (The Art of Information Gathering & Scanning)

Author: Harsh Bothra

Both expert and non-technical readers will benefit from this book's streamlined explanation of hacking. You will get comprehensive knowledge of the most recent tools and methods used by the contemporary penetration testing framework to find vulnerabilities, fix them and safeguard network assets.

What will I gain?

• This book tells about the uses and real-life applications of various techniques in depth, and this acts as a handbook for your concrete step in information security.
• Through this book, you would be able to learn about the modern Penetration Testing Framework, latest tools and techniques, discovering vulnerabilities, patching vulnerabilities, responsible disclosures and protecting assets over the network.

Stay ahead of the curve with our Cybersecurity Online Courses. Enroll now & get expertise in critical systems!