// Comparison

Les virus informatiques : théorie, pratique et applications vs The Shellcoder's Handbook: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Reverse Engineering, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Advanced

5/52009

Les virus informatiques : théorie, pratique et applications

Éric Filiol

Éric Filiol's reference French-language treatment of computer virology. Formal theory, infection mechanisms, offensive and defensive applications, with academic rigor rare on the topic.

Advanced

4/52007

The Shellcoder's Handbook

Discovering and Exploiting Security Holes

Chris Anley, John Heasman, Felix Lindner, Gerardo Richarte

A foundational text on memory-corruption exploitation across Linux, Windows, Solaris and embedded targets. Pre-modern-mitigations in spirit but still the canonical introduction to the techniques the modern toolchain is built to defeat.

Read this if

French-reading security students, researchers, advanced malware analysts who want a formal treatment — French-language literature on the topic is thin.

Readers committed to learning binary exploitation seriously, after they've already finished Hacking: The Art of Exploitation and want a multi-platform reference that goes deeper.

Skip this if

Readers looking for a tooling manual or introduction. Filiol writes dense; algorithmic and systems fundamentals are required.

Anyone expecting modern (post-2010) mitigations or current heap allocators. The book pre-dates ASLR enforcement, modern heap hardening, CFI, and the entire arc of mitigations the modern toolchain assumes. It teaches the techniques modern systems are built to defeat.

Key takeaways

Prix Roberval 2005 (higher-education category) — one of the few French cyber books awarded at that level.
Filiol is a former military cryptanalyst and ran ESAT then ESIEA's virology lab; academic sourcing is visible chapter by chapter.
The only French-language book that treats computer virology with university-textbook rigor.

The Windows exploitation chapters are still the best print introduction to the SEH/PE-format-specific mechanics that don't exist in Erickson.
The heap chapters teach the conceptual vocabulary (unlinking, frontlinking, magic values, freelists) you need to read modern CTF write-ups, even though the specific allocators have moved on.
The "track patches, don't track exploits" chapter is the most underrated piece of vulnerability-research advice in print.

How they compare

We rate Les virus informatiques : théorie, pratique et applications higher (5/5 against 4/5 for The Shellcoder's Handbook). For most readers, that means Les virus informatiques : théorie, pratique et applications is the primary pick and The Shellcoder's Handbook is a useful follow-up.

Both books target advanced-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.

Les virus informatiques : théorie, pratique et applications and The Shellcoder's Handbook both cover Reverse Engineering, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading