// Alternatives
Alternatives to Windows Security Internals
Books in our catalog with overlapping topics and a similar reading level to Windows Security Internals. If Windows Security Internals is the wrong fit at advanced level, start here.
01 · 2017
Windows Internals, Part 1
The canonical Microsoft Press reference on Windows internals: how processes, threads, memory and system services are actually implemented in the modern Windows kernel. User-mode focus in this volume.
Advanced5/5Pavel Yosifovich, Alex Ionescu, Mark Russinovich, David Solomon02 · 2011
A Bug Hunter's Diary
Tobias Klein walks through seven real vulnerabilities he found and exploited, in the form of personal lab notes, what he tried, what failed, and what eventually shipped to vendors.
Intermediate4/5Tobias Klein03 · 2017
Attacking Network Protocols
James Forshaw, Project Zero veteran, on how to capture, parse, and break protocols from the wire up to the application layer, with a strong focus on building reusable analysis tooling.
Advanced5/5James Forshaw04 · 2024
Evading EDR
A component-by-component teardown of how modern EDR sensors actually collect telemetry, and where each data source can be starved, blinded, or bypassed.
Advanced4/5Matt Hand05 · 2006
The Art of Software Security Assessment
The 1200-page reference on auditing C/C++ codebases for security: parsing complex memory and integer interactions, language pitfalls, and how vulnerabilities arise from interactions between layers.
Advanced5/5Mark Dowd, John McDonald, Justin Schuh06 · 2019
Rootkits and Bootkits
Matrosov, Rodionov and Bratus on persistent, deeply-embedded malware: kernel rootkits, MBR/UEFI bootkits, and the forensic techniques that surface them. Strongly Windows-internals oriented.
Advanced4/5Alex Matrosov, Eugene Rodionov, Sergey Bratus07 · 2014
Practical Reverse Engineering
A working reverser's textbook from three Microsoft / Quarkslab veterans, covering the architectures and toolchain you'll actually meet on real targets, including the Windows kernel and modern obfuscation patterns.
Advanced4/5Bruce Dang, Alexandre Gazet, Elias Bachaalany08 · 2007
The Shellcoder's Handbook
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.
Advanced4/5Chris Anley, John Heasman, Felix Lindner, Gerardo Richarte09 · 2017
Advanced Penetration Testing
A red-teamer's tour of getting into high-security targets without Metasploit, leaning on custom C2, social engineering, and tradecraft. Strong ideas, uneven execution.
Advanced3/5Wil Allsopp10 · 2025
Metasploit
The second edition of the definitive No Starch guide to the Metasploit Framework, updated by the project's original maintainers and newer contributors for the modern Framework.
Intermediate4/5David Kennedy, Mati Aharoni, Devon Kearns, Jim O'Gorman, Daniel G. Graham