Sunday, October 5, 2008

Netcat Power Tools Book Review

I have seen this book approximately 2 weeks ago.I got it,but indeed i was not in mood to read it.so i leave it alone in a folder and continue reading my other incomplete books.2 days ago i have seen a post , and it abet me(why? i don't know!)to read this thin book.
Yes,it just finished and i am dangling with something in this book!
At first look it may give you an adventure feel for discovering netcat power tools! umm,I'm not going to stop you from this feel,but i think this book could be better with a fair name and may be something more..
In the beginning of book,i bet you get crazy with repeating of two words: "Server" and "Client" . He has repeated these words over and over.It can repulse a new one who is going to read about a simple security tool such Netcat.
Next thing that must be mentioned is a huge headline in the first chapter.He almost said all of his book briefly in first chapter.
He named netcat as an powerful Banner Grabbing tools! I think always there is more than a simple banner that you get by connecting to a port from netcat.It's cool but not always.Sometimes banners are hidden and also sometimes spoofed,so you need more thing than netcat.Well in this situation netcat can be handy when you have a pattern from many known software that usually listen on a specific port(such as webservers on port 80).
Author mentioned all about windows and Unix/linux version of netcat but it didn't see anything that he notify about absence of -q switch in windows version(you see?!).
Repeating of fixed headline make me bored from this book.For example he has repeated port scanning in chapter 1, 2, 3 and 7.They are almost all alike!
Author has filled many pages with base of some simple protocol and this is not good.He could reference them.
I think this book could name "Computer forensics tools tips and tricks".It could be a graceful name for this book.
Huge list of tips and tricks are great but not plenty.for example it could include the trick of using netcat as an simple web server.it comes very handy.this can be implemented by using bash same this(i can't put code in blog post!why?!):



Simple and useful;)
There is some strange headline in this book such as using nmap and etc.
But a good inform about cryptcat is so good.
anyway i appreciate the author because of writing books for starter, however there are many blame on him.

1 comment:

Adel said...

saLaaaam, baba webLOge jadid moBaraak, hamin alan too emzat too snoop didam :) :X kheili khoshal shodam ;) :D