Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

Jon Erickson wrote "Hacking: The Art of Exploitation," first published by No Starch Press in 2003 and substantially revised for a second edition in 2008. Verifiable public biographical information about Erickson is limited: the primary source for his background is his publisher's author page, which describes him as a vulnerability researcher and computer security specialist based in northern California. Beyond the book itself and its reception, little further independent detail about his life or career is publicly documented.

Content and Structure

The book is distinctive for teaching offensive security from first principles rather than as a tool-driven cookbook. The first edition devoted more than half of its content to programming fundamentals — C, assembly language, and memory layout — before building up to buffer overflow exploitation, alongside sections on networking and cryptology. The second edition reorganized the material into eight chapters, expanded the exploitation coverage to include format-string bugs and a dedicated shellcode chapter, and added a chapter on defensive countermeasures. Both editions shipped with a bootable Linux LiveCD providing a preconfigured development, debugging, and exploitation environment so readers could run every example without installing their own toolchain.

Reception and Legacy

The book was reviewed favorably in established technical and academic venues, including IEEE Security & Privacy and Computerworld, reflecting its reputation among security practitioners and educators as an unusually rigorous entry-level text. "Hacking: The Art of Exploitation" remains one of the most frequently recommended starting points for people entering vulnerability research and exploit development, cited alongside titles like "The Shellcoder's Handbook" as core reading in security curricula and self-study lists.

Timeline

• 2003First edition published by No Starch Press.
• 2008-02Second, expanded edition published, reorganized into eight chapters and bundled with a Linux LiveCD.