The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook

This book is a practical guide to discovering and exploiting security flaws in

web applications. By “web application” we mean an application that is accessed

by using a web browser to communicate with a web server. We examine a wide

variety of different technologies, such as databases, file systems, and web ser-

vices, but only in the context in which these are employed by web applications.

If you want to learn how to run port scans, attack firewalls, or break into

servers in other ways, we suggest you look elsewhere. But if you want to know

how to hack into a web application, steal sensitive data, and perform unau-

thorized actions, then this is the book for you. There is enough that is interest-

ing and fun to say on that subject without straying into any other territory.