okay, ive heard a lot about books that will teach a beginner basic networking holes and how they can be exploited. in turn supposidly there for u to tune up you unsafe network, but i couldnt care about that! (right now anyways. i may one day!) a few examples being: (compiled from a search at amazon.ca)

*Hacking Exposed
*Hacking Exposed Windows 2K
*Hacking Exposed Linux
*Counter Hack: A Step-by-Step Guide to Computer Attacks and Effective Defenses
*Hack Attacks Revealed: A Complete Reference with Custom Security Hacking Toolkit
*Hacking Windows : How Hackers Break into Windows Systems

now my question is, would these books explain the basics of hacking to a newbie well? ide say i know some stuff, like how to use tracert and netstat in dos. but nothing really. im not an idiot tho, i can understand what i read. but if i wheer to buy one of these books should it be accompanied with a basic networking book just to get the basics of taht down, or would the books explain that? has anyone read any of these or any others they care to comment or make suggestions on? please feel free.

i have always been recomended hacking exposed 2nd edition. i have it just havent the time to look at it yet.

i cant stress this enough, the local library is your best friend. read everything you can becasue its all free. start with basic networking and get a linux box, learn to use it well. try to set up a windows 2000 or nt box and learn them also.

These books will NOT teach you the fundamental networking concepts. They lightly go over things like TCP/IP but only where its convinient and where you NEED to know to preform... And they for sure will not go over things like switching and VLANs and routing protocols... Unless of course, they somewhere describe a hack against one of those things, but even then, the actual networking knowledge is only brushed.

Those books are good for raw security issues (actually, very good) but they WILL NOT help you in devising your own concepts about hacking at all. They just tell you how to do something and why it works. They wont give you the train of thought needed to come up with your own exploits.

It all depends on what you are looking for.

--
cEnsE
those are just my opinions, not fact

i have linux on a seperate partio but dont use it cuz i cant get on the internet (winmodem) and m too poor for a new modem. i will probably get a unix book and basic networking book, and after haring the last post wont get one of those. i dont want to be told "Heres how you do this!" cuz then i only know hwo to do that. i would like to find some stuff that starts basic (no crap about trojans or anything) and works up so i actually know what im doing and how everything works.