Targeted attacks are a class of dedicated attacks that aim at a specific user, company or organization to gain access to the critical data in a stealthy manner. This book do a great work explaining the nuts and bolts of this stuff.
The book is organized along nine chapters: ‘1. Introduction’, ‘2. Intelligence Gathering’, ‘3. Infecting the Target’, ‘4. System Exploitation’, ‘5. Data Exfiltration Mechanisms’, ‘6. Maintaining Control and Lateral Movement’, ‘7. Why targeted Cyber Attacks Are Easy to Conduct?’, ‘8. Challenges and Countermeasures’ and ‘9. Conclusions’.
The chapter 1 lays the foundation of the different phases required for successful execution of targeted attacks. Those phases are covered in detail along chapters 2-6. I would highlight in chapter 1 how the authors makes the fine difference between targeted attacks and Advanced Persistent Threats (APT). Good to know.
This book is not a technical book. You are not going to find Assembly dead listings, IDS’ signatures and so on. It is a book commenting in the current context for targeted attacks. It does a good work though. If you want to read more on the topics it adds good references at the end of chapters.
Maybe the chapter 4 is the most technical one. It handles system exploitation. It covers the usual protection mechanisms found in systems (DEP, ASLR, etc) and how these are bypassed by advanced exploits.
The chapter 7 does a good description of Crimeware-as-a-Service (CaaS). It describes the current and developed malware economy where attackers are able to buy infrastructure and exploits to craft effective and affordable attacks.
Chapters 8 and 9 raise the awareness of the naive Internet user. It is all about risk management, best practice guidelines and the real nature of these attacks.
In summary, this book is a good and simple reference on targeted attacks. It is an useful resource to understand the purpose of targeted attacks and the intentions behind of the attackers.
I found this book available here:
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