Bookshelf: Black Hat Bash

From the Shelf:

• N. Aleks and D. Farhi, Black Hat Bash. No Starch Press, INC, 2024. (https://nostarch.com/black-hat-bash)

Black Hat Bash isn't one of the books I expected to be putting on my reading list, never mind writing a post specifically discussing it. I originally purchased it as a supplemental reference for a 2-week unit for a small undergraduate course that required some automation for assignments. The plan was to bookmark a few pages that were lined up well with a set of tutorials and then probably dust it off once a year until a new version comes out.... but I've been using it for 2 weeks now, and probably will be referencing it for at least the rest of the semester.

The No Starch Press (not an affiliate link) books tend to be very accessible and beginner friendly, if not completely designed for readers approaching a topic on day zero. I have a selection of their books that I highly recommend because of this accessibility. The trade-off is that there's a couple books in the line up that are not particularly useful for intermediate or advanced users. I do recommend several books (such as the Practical SDR ) as reference even for intermediate users who might need to brush up on some of the basics, but that's not true for the full series. And that's okay! Just like not all books are written for beginners, not all books are written for the pros :)

The book is well organized; starting with the basics of bash scripting and working up to use cases in cybersecurity applications. There is even a section (chapter 3) devoted to setting up a test scenario with the resources from the associated GitHub repository in order to follow the examples step-by step to ensure reproducible results. It is (to absolutely no surprise) extremely security focused, especially in the later chapters. The reconnaissance and vulnerability scanning sections have some great discussion of the process, and not just how to execute the commands. I think BHB hits a sweet spot for cybersecurity (or cybersecurity adjacent) students and professionals who need to improve their automation skills. It's particularly valuable for those transitioning from GUI-based security tools to command-line workflows, or for those who want to incorporate more security-focused scripting into their daily tasks. Unfortunately, I can’t say I will be reading BHB cover to cover, but I’ve found some useful gems in the examples and discussion that make it worth coming back to. I’ll likely be sticking to the file permission, cron jobs, and a bit of fuzzing.