// Prerequisites
What to read before The Car Hacker's Handbook
If The Car Hacker's Handbook feels too steep at intermediate level, here is what to read first. Lighter books in the same topics that build the prerequisites this one assumes.
01 · 2005
Reversing
The book that taught a generation how software actually looks once you strip away the source. Still the clearest on-ramp to thinking in assembly, even with dated tools.
Intermediate4/5Eldad Eilam02 · 2011
The IDA Pro Book
Chris Eagle's deep manual on IDA Pro, the disassembler that defined a generation of reverse engineering. Useful even with Ghidra in the picture, since most malware-analysis literature still assumes IDA.
Intermediate4/5Chris Eagle03 · 2012
Practical Malware Analysis
Still the gold standard textbook for static and dynamic malware analysis on Windows.
Intermediate5/5Michael Sikorski, Andrew Honig04 · 2003
Hacking the Xbox
Andrew "bunnie" Huang on the original Xbox: hardware modding as the entry path into reverse engineering, plus a frank account of the legal fight that followed.
Intermediate4/5Andrew "bunnie" Huang05 · 2021
Practical IoT Hacking
Five-author guide to IoT pentesting covering hardware probing, radio (BLE / Zigbee / LoRa), embedded firmware, and the protocols that connect cheap devices to vulnerable backends.
Intermediate4/5Fotios Chantzis, Ioannis Stais, Paulino Calderon, Evangelos Deirmentzoglou, Beau Woods06 · 2020
The Ghidra Book
The reference manual for the NSA's open-source disassembler, written by the author of The IDA Pro Book. Exhaustive on the tool, thinner on the craft of reversing itself.
Intermediate4/5Chris Eagle, Kara Nance07 · 2021
The Hardware Hacking Handbook
Jasper van Woudenberg and Colin O'Flynn (NewAE / ChipWhisperer) on real hardware attacks: bus sniffing, fault injection, side-channel power analysis, and the lab work that turns a black box into a known target.
Advanced5/5Jasper van Woudenberg, Colin O'Flynn08 · 2017
American Kingpin
A propulsive account of how Ross Ulbricht built the Silk Road dark-web drug empire as Dread Pirate Roberts, and how a handful of investigators across rival agencies finally unmasked him.
Beginner5/5Nick Bilton