OS X for Hackers at heart: The Apple of Every Hacker’s Eye
reviewed by Robert Pritchett
Authors: Ken Caruso, Chris Hurley, Johnny Long, Preston Norvell, Tom Owad and Bruce Potter. Booksite: http://www.syngress.com/catalog/?pid=3430 Published: December 12, 2005. Pages: 512 $50 USD, $70 CND, £28 GBP, 43€ EUR and downloadable as an eBook. ISBN: 1597490407 Requirements: A desire to “hack” Mac OS X. Strengths: Presents “behind the scenes” information not printed anywhere else that I know of. Weaknesses: I found one page that had unintended white space due to a printing error where the orphaned sentence went to the following page without error, but I didn’t nick Syngress for this one. |
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OS X for Hackers at heart: The Apple of Every Hacker’s Eye is a compilation of articles brought together into one book on hacking Mac OS X by the authors listed above.
I make it a point to get our own reviewers to use “Mac OS X” instead of OS X” when writing, but here is a book that drops the Mac part and that bothered me. And I found a page that split a sentence between two pages about half-way down, but that is a printing issue and I’m sure will be addressed in the next rev.
The book is organized into 7 chapters on network administration, automation, using it in a Microsoft environment, wardriving and penetration testing, tricks that look cool and road-warrioring. The Appendix has about 50 pages devoted to hacking various iPods and going back and forth between Macs and Windows systems.
Each chapter follows the Syngress format for ending with a Summary, Solutions Fast Track and Frequently Asked Questions.
Some of the hacks have “extra credit” for digging deeper. Some don’t.
In the first chapter, the authors show how to run a headless Mac, use Apple remote Desktop, VNC, SSH and the Serial Console before getting into using the Mac as a router for host, static and dynamic rioting and even using an app named “Zebra”, and also using Mac OS X as a RADIUS server.
Chapter 2 walks through how to use Automator and AppleScripting, the UNIX commands, and Bash and bringing all three together.
Chapter 3 boldly walks us into Microsoftlandia. Topics covered are NFS, NTLM, MS Remote Desktop Client, Rdesktop, VNC, and terminal talking with Windows.
Chapter 4 opens up with KisMAC and other wardriving and WLAN tools.
Chapter 5 gets us back to the Mac and guides us through compiling and porting Open Source software using DarwinPorts and Fink and also goes through a list of security tools based on categories of attacking, and defending, cryptoing, evasion, footprinting, monitoring, password cracking, programming and scanning. It also gets into using Ethereal and Nessus and running CD-based Linux distros with Virtual PC. I found this chapter to be very interesting, as it dealt with security issues.
Chapter 6 devotes itself to PowerBook stunts such as screensavers, widgets, the Apple Motion Sensor, VNC and remote Desktopping, Gestures, Sogudi and GUI scripts.
Chapter 7 gets into securing Email for the Road Warrior and battery management.
The Appendix on hacking iPods could be a book all by itself.
If you really want to get geeky and get into the side of the Mac that is normally hidden, here is a book on how to get there.
