Recommended books for Pentesters – A collection of books for Linux security administrators and pentesters

So you want to be pentester? A common question is where do you start? This post gives you a list of recommended books for Pentesters. It is useful for any Linux security administrators and aspiring pentesters or anyone who is interested to learn the basic workings of Penetration test with Linux. As I write mostly about Kali Linux, I’ve focused on Kali Linux in this list, but this list if not limited to Kali Linux only, it is a recommended set of list for anyone who wants to be a Linux security administrator or penetration tester.

This list and these recommended books will benefit any information security professionals of all levels, pentesters, systems administrators, network administrators, and beginning and intermediate professional pen testers, as well as students majoring in information security.  All books are available in Amazon, I’ve only listed the ones with good ratings, but there are more books available.. so read some reviews before you go on and buy yourself one.

List of recommended books for pentesters

A Bug Hunter’s Diary: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Software Security [Paperback] by Tobias Klein	UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (4th Edition) [Paperback] by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein , Ben Whaley
The Hacker Playbook: Practical Guide To Penetration Testing [Kindle Edition] by Peter Kim (Author)	Fuzzing: Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery [Paperback] by Michael Sutton , Adam Greene, Pedram Amini
Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide [Paperback] by David Kennedy , Jim O’Gorman , Devon Kearns , Mati Aharoni	The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws [Paperback] by Dafydd Stuttard , Marcus Pinto
The Basics of Pentesting and Penetration Testing, Second Edition: Ethical Pentesting and Penetration Testing Made Easy [Paperback] by Patrick Engebretson	Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel Paperback by Greg Hoglund (Author), Jamie Butler (Author)
Pentesting: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition [Paperback] by Jon Erickson	Metasploit Toolkit for Penetration Testing, Exploit Development, and Vulnerability Research [Paperback] by David Maynor , Thomas Wilhelm
Penetration Tester’s Open Source Toolkit, Vol. 2 Paperback by Jeremy Faircloth (Author), Chris Hurley (Author), Jesse Varsalone (Author)	The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws [Paperback] by Dafydd Stuttard , Marcus Pinto
CWSP Certified Wireless Security Professional Official Study Guide (Exam PW0-200), Second Edition [Paperback] by Tom Carpenter , Grant Moerschel , Richard Dreger	CWNA Certified Wireless Network Administrator Official Study Guide (Exam PW0-100), Fourth Edition (Certification Press) [Paperback] by Tom Carpenter , Joel Barrett

Hope this list comes in handy and help those who would like to learn. These recommended books will introduce you to the most current tools for Linux pen testing. You will learn how to configure networking components, storage devices and system services such as DHCP and web services along with using some common tools used in Kali Linux aka Linux that are used for Pentest these days. Good Luck.