Beauty and the beast: Hacking for pleasure and profit

The various features of The Shellcoder's Handbook which is extremely valuable for the excellent technical level of its content are discussed. Its other advantage is that it demonstrates clearly the intellectual way of hacking. The book has 24 chapters divided into four major parts titled Introduction to Exploitation: Linux on x86; Exploiting More Platforms: Windows, Solaris, and Tru64: Vulnerability Discovery: and Advanced Materials. A technique in Chapter 20 hardcodes the privilege level of every user to that of the database owner by manipulating the code in memory while the database system is running.