CEH Certified Ethical Hacker All-in-One Exam Guide

by Matt Walker

Get complete coverage of all the objectives included on the EC-Council's Certified Ethical Hacker exam inside this comprehensive resource. Written by an IT security expert, this authoritative guide covers the vendor-neutral CEH exam in full detail. You'll find learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter, exam tips, practice exam questions, and in-depth explanations. Designed to help you pass the exam with ease, this definitive volume also serves as an essential on-the-job reference. COVERS ALL EXAM TOPICS,

Genres: Technology, Hackers, Reference, Computers, Technical, Nonfiction, Computer Science

395 pages, Hardcover

Published September 7, 2011

Reviews

[J.R. · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author opens with an anecdote from Alice in Wonderland which was appropriate, since I felt as though my world were being turned upside-down every time I took one of the practice quizzes. The quizzes in the practice exams accompanying this book are riddled with errors that invert the sense of the question: right answers become wrong and vice versa.

The author is very enamored of his informal/jokey authorial voice, but he (or his technical editor) should have spent more time editing the practice tests. I counted several critical errors, including:


* A question about google 'dorking' syntax with a typo, invalidating the syntax
* A question about null sessions where 2 of the 4 possible choices were character-for-character identical (allowing the reader to artificially eliminate those two)
* A question about XMAS scans where the 'quick answer' implies that identifying the scan as an XMAS scan is incorrect, but the in-depth answer section identifies the answer as correct.
* An omitted "NOT" that inverted the sense of the question
* A transposition of options A and B from the quiz portion to the detailed answer key, such that a student answering "A" would see that "B" was correct and believe he answered incorrectly.
* Use of the DNS term "SOA" where the XML term "SOAP" was intended.
* Transposition of the terms "covert" and "overt" in the answer key, such that a student seeking a correction will read and memorize an incorrect definition.


If you're using the practice exams to prepare for the CEH exam, set aside plenty of additional time to correct Walker's mistakes, and make sure that you don't take anything in the answers as authoritative; if you get a question "wrong", go verify the answer yourself. I am now wondering how many of my "right" answers were also typos, misleading me into a false sense of security ...

The quizzes are a useful review tool, but you'll need to spend about an hour after each 25-question quiz verifying the technical background for each answer. "All-in-One" is not accurate -- you're going to need at least one more authoritative source of information to prepare for the exam.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does not cover the exam entirely but I would say it's close to 90%

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was sufficient in preparing for (and passing) the CEH exam. There were some things I ran into in the exam that I don't think were covered in this book (such as particular protocols/ports), but some of them I already knew from previous studies/experience so it wasn't a big deal.

As others have probably pointed out, there are some errors in this book. Some are obvious, but some aren't. There are also some inconsistencies that I found (for example, responses to the various scans). I hope these are fixed in the next version/edition of this book, but they're not deal breakers, IMO. I still recommend this book for anyone wanting to pursue the CEH cert.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first took the CEH exam over 10-years ago, and used this book as a refresher when re-certifying this year. There were a few questions that were awkwardly phrased, but far from being a negative it is good practice, since I swear that the people writing the EC-Council's tests must not be native English speakers.

[Abdul · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I know. A guy writing and selling a study book just told you it won’t be enough. Trust me when I say it, though, I’m not kidding. Of course this will be a good study reference. Of course you can learn something from it if you really want to. Of course I did everything I could to make it as up to date and comprehensive as possible. But if you’re under the insane assumption this is a magic ticket, that somehow written word from 2016 is going to magically hit the word-for-word reference on a specific test question in whatever timeframe/year you’re reading this, I sincerely encourage you to find some professional help before the furniture starts talking to you and the cat starts making sense”

Synopsis:
NOTE: THIS BOOK IS THE 3RD EDITION FOR CEH v9.
4th Edition will be released on March 22, 2019.

COVERS ALL EXAM TOPICS, INCLUDING:
- Introduction to ethical hacking
- Cryptography
- Reconnaissance and footprinting
- Network scanning
- Enumeration
- System hacking
- Evasion techniques
- Social engineering and physical security
- Hacking web servers and applications
- SQL injection
- Viruses, trojans, and other attacks
- Wireless hacking
- Penetration testing

CD-ROM FEATURES:
- Two practice exams
- PDF copy of the book
- Bonus appendix with author's recommended tools, sites, and references

My Take:
I have passed my Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) v9 Exam from the EC-Council (ECC) on 31st December 2018 using this book as my main guide.

This is the most well structured and easy to understand book on the subject.
Matt Walker is not only very knowledgeable and a capable teacher but he is a very entertaining author with lots of relevant stories about the hilarities and the horrors of the IT Security field.

I am a huge movies fan so I thoroughly enjoyed all the movie recommendations the author made in his book. All are good (classics) movies that are relevant somehow to the Kingdom of Geekdom!

The book cuts out the excess and the fluff from the official ECC course material and focuses on what is examinable. I have hugely enjoyed reading this book and it did not feel like a chore thanks to Matt's style.

I am aware a lot of purists criticize the jokes, stories from the field or other sideline notes and wanted Matt to focus on the topic at hand. Let's face it. This is a highly technical subject and can get very dry and min numbing quickly especially when you are under the pressure of studying for an exam. I found it excellent to have a few breaks to bring stories or horror stories from the field which may directly or indirectly relate to the topic at hand. It was a welcome pause and a much-needed laugh after reading many pages non-stop. Read it the first time around and skip it on your next focused read.

One minor criticism which is unfair to make is, the Exam had some topics that were not covered in the book. I still passed with 91% but that is due to sing other supplementary sources such as practice questions and Cybrary videos. Be sure to add those to your arsenal. The author makes it clear that there is no one guide to cover them all, even the ECC Courseware. ECC admits they add questions not covered by official material as they believe it is a good test for candidates with real-world knowledge or those who went the extra mile to study beyond the textbook or tinker with the tools. Expect a few random left hooks such as OpenSSL commands and switches or differences between Linux logs to name two examples.

Study this book well. Do all the practice questions. Then look at additional sources such as the below and you will be fine.

I highly recommend getting proficient with Wireshark, nmap, snort, hping, tcpdump, Kali Linux, TCP/IP, flags, states and handshake and subnetting.

Additional resources I used:
- Cybrary.com's free Ethical Hacking course
- Boson Software's ExamSim for CEH v9, over 500 Qs with detailed answers ($$ but worth it)
-Home virtual lab using Kali Linux, Windows 7, Metaploitable 2 and Windows 2012 R2 server

[Zachary Martina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know I would ever be a target of con artists because I have lived my life outright, and the idea of knowing that I had lost what I had labored for to some pretentious individuals will haunt me forever. But then I found a team of Ethical Hackers and everything changed. Joel explained how the process of recovering my money would work, and what we needed to do to get my hard-earned money back, they did an impressive job doing private investigations on those con artists that even my cop friend I had reported the case to marveled at their expertise. And then they did well-recouping funds I had sent to those pranksters severally on different platforms and wallets. The process took a while but the efforts invested in it were worthwhile. The day I confirmed the coins in my wallet felt like I just earned a million bucks. (WhatsApp +12525120391).

Zachary Martina H..

[Gabriel Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book!

Despite not being deep enough for people who already have some Computer Science background, it delivers the content in a rather interesting way, holding reader’s attention.

Even if your goal is to take the CEH, I would suggest not to worry with it for a few days and enjoy the ride of reading this book. You will have a lot of fun during the process and will definitely learn some tricks.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a class on security testing, not with the intention of taking the exam. The book gave a good overview of the basics, with interesting stories, and a lot of funny anecdotes and metaphors to keep the material from being dry.

[A.P. Hofleitner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very engaging, educational, and often funny as well. I did not end up taking the CEH exam, because I had a military deployment that came up and didn't give me enough time to practice before taking it, but I would read it again if I decided to pursue the CEH cert.

[Alex Clark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Full of outdated and inaccurate information, and also bad advice. Examples: on page 390 Walker calls antivirus a "waste of time" and on page 76 he talks about spoofing phone numbers with spoofcard.com.

[Nirakar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good

[Kathryn Mortimer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very frustrated by misleading nature of some of the questions and answers. But overall, a useful and understandable guide through the topics of the exam.

[Qudrat Ullah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dhkhl

[Bhavana Varma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much easier to understand than the official courseware and it covers everything

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Used this and passed...

[Jon Borgonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

great intro to ethical hacking by an amazing author and was a very fun read. seriously, hilarious. keeps studies engaging.
also i passed the exam.

[Jamie Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave a good overview. If you don't have time, can go straight to Chapter Reviews and skip the story telling portion in the main content. :-)

[Pedro Polonia]

I did my CEH certification. Also used the official documentation (4K pages) and the course material.

[Jay Hickman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great condensed book for those who have experience in this field to prepare for the Certified Ethical Hacker Exam. Matt Walker writes in a conversational style making this this technical subject an easy read.

[joshua dray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great prep for the CEH exam!

[Olga · Rating 3 out of 5]

kind of out-dated and skips a lot of info.

[Delhi Irc]

Location: GIC IRC
Accession no: DL026833

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful

[Aman]

CEH

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good study guide for the exam. For potentially dry material he approached it in a way that made it an easy book to read.

[Caotu · Rating 1 out of 5]

i like