New Russian Translations of Leading Cybersecurity Books on Ethical Hacking, Reverse Engineering, Malware Analysis, and Privacy Released
A well-known Russian-language cybersecurity library has released a substantial batch of new translations of leading English books on ethical hacking, bug bounty hunting, reverse engineering, malware analysis, and privacy.
The project, which continues the long-running series “Materials on Hacking in Russian,” focuses on translating high-quality resources and hosting them on the Hackbooks site. The latest update adds more than a dozen titles that span web application security, network discovery, protocol exploitation, binary analysis, and defensive techniques.
Web Application Security and Bug Hunting
Web Hacking 101: How to Make Money Hacking Ethically presents more than thirty real-world vulnerability disclosures, covering HTML injection, XSS, CSRF, open redirects, remote code execution, and business logic flaws, each accompanied by attack classification, original reports, bounty amounts, and key takeaways.
Real-World Bug Hunting: A Field Guide to Web Hacking by Peter Yaworski walks readers through rewarded vulnerability reports, dedicating chapters to XSS, CSRF, SSRF, SQL injection, XXE, subdomain takeover, IDOR, OAuth issues, race conditions, and logic errors while also explaining how to select bug bounty programs and write effective reports.
Network Security and Protocol Analysis
The official Nmap Network Scanning guide covers host and service detection, firewall and IDS evasion, performance tuning, and automation via the Nmap Scripting Engine, with practical scenarios for network inventory, penetration testing, rogue access point discovery, and worm response.
Attacking Network Protocols: A Hacker’s Guide to Capture, Analysis, and Exploitation teaches traffic capture, modification, and replay, followed by static and dynamic analysis, protocol reverse engineering, custom proxy and dissector development, fuzzing, debugging, memory corruption exploitation, authentication bypass, and denial-of-service techniques.
Reverse Engineering and Binary Analysis
Reverse Engineering for Beginners is a large free textbook that teaches assembly reading and logic reconstruction, illustrating how C and C++ constructs appear after compilation, covering function calls, stack, memory, optimizations, system APIs, multiple architectures, and operating systems.
How to Approach Binary File Format Analysis explains encodings, endianness, numbers, flags, structures, alignment, signatures, and headers, offering a practical workflow using histograms, string searches, section extraction, and pattern matching for digital forensics, malware analysis, data recovery, and converter development.
Privacy, Surveillance, and Cryptography
Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest explores creating ambiguous or misleading data to resist mass surveillance, drawing examples from WWII chaff, social media bots, and search query masking tools while discussing technical and ethical limits.
Gigabytes of Power by Kiwi Bird connects societal and technological history with growing state and corporate control, covering mass surveillance, biometrics, cryptography, GSM and satellite TV hacking, propaganda, and counter-terrorism restrictions.
Crypto Wars: The Fight for Privacy in the Digital Age traces fifty years of conflict between privacy advocates and governments, examining debates around DES, academic freedom, crypto export controls, key escrow, and post-Snowden developments.
Windows Security and Malware Analysis
Windows Security Internals: A Deep Dive into Windows Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing by James Forshaw details kernel and user-mode security mechanisms including access tokens, security descriptors, rights checking, auditing, SAM, Active Directory, NTLM, and Kerberos, with PowerShell examples for hands-on exploration.
Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software guides readers through the full malware investigation lifecycle—from initial file inspection to logic reconstruction—using static and dynamic analysis, disassemblers, debuggers, memory forensics, network behavior, packers, and shellcode, reinforced by laboratory exercises.
Evasive Malware: A Field Guide to Detecting, Analyzing, and Defeating Advanced Threats focuses on malware that detects virtual machines, sandboxes, and analysis tools, covering anti-disassembly and anti-debugging methods, process injection, rootkits, fileless techniques, packers, obfuscation, and laboratory setup recommendations.
Fuzzing and Automated Testing
The Fuzzing Book is an interactive textbook demonstrating random, mutational, grey-box, grammar-based, search-based, and symbolic fuzzing, complete with executable Python examples and Jupyter notebooks that readers can run while studying.
Readers are encouraged to explore the full collection on Hackbooks and share the resources with the community. The translations significantly lower the barrier for Russian-speaking professionals and students seeking authoritative material on information security, reverse engineering, and antivirus research.
Related articles
Backblaze Responds in Minutes While reg.ru Delays Action on Banking Trojan Infrastructure
A detailed reverse-engineering report reveals a sophisticated Android banking Trojan distributed via Telegram spam that disables antivirus apps, intercepts SMS one-time codes, and exfiltrates banking credentials. The malware uses AES-encrypted assets, a custom binary protocol over sockets, and multiple modules for screen streaming, keylogging, microphone access, and remote control. Infrastructure analysis traced the payload to an S3-compatible bucket on Backblaze, four command-and-control domains, and a VPS, with the domains registered through reg.ru. Notifications sent to Backblaze resulted in account termination within 11 minutes, while reg.ru responded only after a week with a statement refusing action without a court order. The same signing certificate appears across multiple variants, allowing rapid infrastructure rotation that keeps the campaign active despite takedown attempts. Kaspersky and CERT teams were also notified but produced no visible results within the observed period.
SLEEPWALKER Backdoor Activates on Windows via Single Custom Encrypted Packet
SLEEPWALKER is a passive Windows backdoor that stays dormant in memory until it receives one specially crafted encrypted network packet. Upon activation the implant decrypts and executes custom bytecode written in a proprietary 23-instruction language, eliminating traditional beaconing and reducing network indicators. The malware is delivered as a 64-bit DLL that impersonates dpapi.dll and is loaded via DLL side-loading into ERAAgent.exe, the executable of the ESET Management Agent used in ESET PROTECT deployments. It inspects raw traffic in promiscuous mode, supports multiple transport protocols including TCP, UDP, ICMP, SMB named pipes and VMware VMCI, and can weaken security by modifying registry values such as EveryoneIncludesAnonymous and NullSessionPipes. Configuration is protected with AES-256-CCM and the sample contains no confirmed victims or attributed infrastructure. Researchers have released YARA rules and read-only scanning utilities to detect the implant and its artifacts.
SLEEPWALKER Backdoor Stays Dormant Until Triggered by Single Custom Network Packet
SLEEPWALKER is a stealthy Windows backdoor that remains inactive until it receives one specially crafted encrypted network packet. The implant then decrypts and executes custom bytecode from a proprietary 23-instruction language, enabling chained tasks, data movement, and in-memory code execution without prior outbound communication. The 64-bit DLL masquerades as dpapi.dll and is designed for DLL side-loading into ERAAgent.exe, the executable of the ESET Management Agent used in ESET PROTECT deployments. It inspects raw network traffic in promiscuous mode, supports multiple transport protocols including TCP, UDP, ICMP, SMB named pipes, and VMware VMCI, and can weaken security by modifying registry values such as EveryoneIncludesAnonymous. No confirmed victims or attribution have been identified, and the analysis is based on a single sample. Researchers recommend auditing endpoints for unexpected dpapi.dll files alongside ERAAgent.exe and reviewing related registry settings.
AmnesiaStealer Malware for macOS Hijacks Authenticated Browser Sessions via ClickFix and Chromium
A new macOS malware strain named AmnesiaStealer has emerged that combines infostealing, persistence mechanisms, and the ability to silently take over already authenticated browser sessions. The infection chain begins with a fake GitHub page that tricks victims into copying a malicious command into Terminal using the ClickFix social engineering technique. Once executed, the Rust-based payload collects system data, displays a fake installer window to capture the user password, and attempts to unlock the Keychain for protected credentials. Targeted data includes browser cookies, history, extensions, documents, Apple Notes, Telegram sessions, and cryptocurrency wallet information. A secondary module copies the browser profile and launches a hidden Chromium instance controlled through the Chrome DevTools Protocol, allowing attackers to interact with active sessions that have already passed multi-factor authentication. Persistence is achieved via a disguised LaunchDaemon, and the malware attempts to remove installation artifacts afterward.