Ethical Password Cracking. Decode passwords using John the Ripper, hashcat, and advanced methods for password breaking

James Leyte-Vidal

Whether you’re looking to crack passwords as part of a thorough security audit or aiming to recover vital information, this book will equip you with the skills to accomplish your goals. Written by a cybersecurity expert with over fifteen years of experience in penetration testing, Ethical Password Cracking offers a thorough understanding of password protection and the correct approach to retrieving password-protected data.As you progress through the chapters, you first familiarize yourself with how credentials are stored, delving briefly into the math behind password cracking. Then, the book will take you through various tools and techniques to help you recover desired passwords before focusing on common cracking use cases, hash recovery, and cracking. Real-life examples will prompt you to explore brute-force versus dictionary-based approaches and teach you how to apply them to various types of credential storage.By the end of this book, you'll understand how passwords are protected and how to crack the most common credential types with ease.

Mastering Adobe Photoshop 2024. Discover the smart way to polish your digital imagery skills by editing professional looking photos

Gary Bradley

Unlock the full potential of Photoshop, the go-to app for content creators, by mastering its complex tools and features. This book, drawing from the award-winning author’s 25+ years of design experience, builds on your existing Photoshop knowledge with proven industry techniques, serving as a launchpad to develop professional skills and transformative personal growth.You’ll fine-tune color and tone in your images with non-destructive adjustment layers and conceal content like backdrops with precise masking techniques for fine details like hair. Working through a series of real-world editing projects, crafting realistic brand mockups and traditional marketing collateral, you’ll learn robust methods for building social media assets in Photoshop, from images to animated GIFs and videos. You’ll also be able to bring your typography to life with styles and effects that are simple to edit and store as preset effects. The final section of the book encapsulates all of your learning to create complex montages using advanced masking and compositing techniques. You’ll have fun elevating your designs with surreal art styles and conceptual imagery using retouching, blending, and liquify filters.By the end of this Adobe Photoshop book, you’ll be equipped to create captivating visuals that leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Polished Ruby Programming. Build better software with more intuitive, maintainable, scalable, and high-performance Ruby code

Jeremy Evans

Anyone striving to become an expert Ruby programmer needs to be able to write maintainable applications.Polished Ruby Programming will help you get better at designing scalable and robust Ruby programs, so that no matter how big the codebase grows, maintaining it will be a breeze.This book takes you on a journey through implementation approaches for many common programming situations, the trade-offs inherent in each approach, and why you may choose to use different approaches in different situations. You'll start by refreshing Ruby fundamentals, such as correctly using core classes, class and method design, variable usage, error handling, and code formatting. Then you'll move on to higher-level programming principles, such as library design, use of metaprogramming and domain-specific languages, and refactoring. Finally, you'll learn principles specific to web application development, such as how to choose a database and web framework, and how to use advanced security features.By the end of this Ruby programming book, you’ll be a well rounded web developer with a deep understanding of Ruby.While most code examples and principles discussed in the book apply to all Ruby versions, some examples and principles are specific to Ruby 3.0, the latest release at the time of publication.

Network Protocols for Security Professionals. Probe and identify network-based vulnerabilities and safeguard against network protocol breaches

Yoram Orzach, Deepanshu Khanna

With the increased demand for computer systems and the ever-evolving internet, network security now plays an even bigger role in securing IT infrastructures against attacks. Equipped with the knowledge of how to find vulnerabilities and infiltrate organizations through their networks, you’ll be able to think like a hacker and safeguard your organization’s network and networking devices. Network Protocols for Security Professionals will show you how.This comprehensive guide gradually increases in complexity, taking you from the basics to advanced concepts. Starting with the structure of data network protocols, devices, and breaches, you’ll become familiar with attacking tools and scripts that take advantage of these breaches. Once you’ve covered the basics, you’ll learn about attacks that target networks and network devices. Your learning journey will get more exciting as you perform eavesdropping, learn data analysis, and use behavior analysis for network forensics. As you progress, you’ll develop a thorough understanding of network protocols and how to use methods and tools you learned in the previous parts to attack and protect these protocols.By the end of this network security book, you’ll be well versed in network protocol security and security countermeasures to protect network protocols.

Software Architecture for Busy Developers. Talk and act like a software architect in one weekend

Stéphane Eyskens

Are you a seasoned developer who likes to add value to a project beyond just writing code? Have you realized that good development practices are not enough to make a project successful, and you now want to embrace the bigger picture in the IT landscape? If so, you're ready to become a software architect; someone who can deal with any IT stakeholder as well as add value to the numerous dimensions of software development.The sheer volume of content on software architecture can be overwhelming, however. Software Architecture for Busy Developers is here to help. Written by Stéphane Eyskens, author of The Azure Cloud Native Mapbook, this book guides you through your software architecture journey in a pragmatic way using real-world scenarios. By drawing on over 20 years of consulting experience, Stéphane will help you understand the role of a software architect, without the fluff or unnecessarily complex theory.You'll begin by understanding what non-functional requirements mean and how they concretely impact target architecture. The book then covers different frameworks used across the entire enterprise landscape with the help of use cases and examples. Finally, you'll discover ways in which the cloud is becoming a game changer in the world of software architecture.By the end of this book, you'll have gained a holistic understanding of the architectural landscape, as well as more specific software architecture skills. You'll also be ready to pursue your software architecture journey on your own - and in just one weekend!

Instant RaphaelJS Starter. Get to grips with RaphaelJS - a powerful cross-browser compatible vector graphics library, to create interactive 2D graphics and animations with ease

Krishna Sagar

Drawing in a browser without images has been around for a long time but it was a complex task with browser support issues. Raphael JS aims to solve all these problems with simple and clear methods to draw cross-browser compatible drawings. Imagine drawing complex dials, graphs, and meters for a dashboard, all without images, and the ability to dynamically manipulate those drawings. Creativity is the only limit with Raphael JS.Instant RaphaelJS Starter is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear step-by-step exercises, which will help you take advantage of the real power that is behind Raphael JS, and give you a good grounding in using it in your web pages.Instant RaphaelJS Starter looks at the HTML5 video formats available, and breaks down the mystery and confusion that surrounds which format to use. It will take you through a number of clear, practical recipes that will help you to take advantage of the new HTML5 video standard, quickly and painlessly. You will also learn how to draw your own shapes using any vector graphics editor, or by using one of the pre-defined shapes. We will also take a look at adding functionality such as DOM events, or animations, as well as how to manipulate the shapes dynamically. If you want to take advantage of imageless vector graphics for browsers using Raphael JS, then this is the book for you.You will learn everything you need to know to convert shapes and perform animations, as well as how to draw custom shapes with simple techniques using Raphael JS and use them across multiple browsers.

ZBrush 4 Sculpting for Games: Beginner's Guide. Sculpt machines, environments, and creatures for your game development projects

Manuel Scherer

ZBrush is a fantastic tool for creating models for use in computer games. Using a wide range of powerful tools you can create models for vehicles, props, environments, and characters.This book makes creating game art in ZBrush fast and easy. It covers everything you need to create models of all kinds for your game projects, even if you've never used ZBrush before.Built around four complete ZBrush projects, the book gives you everything you need to sculpt props, vehicles, and creatures in ZBrush. You'll start by creating a spooky tree model, mastering the sculpting, texturing, and decoration skills that are essential for all ZBrush topics. Next you'll move to man-made objects with a sci-fi drone. Next you'll see how to sculpt monsters and other creatures, deal with cloth and other soft materials, and prepare the model to become an animated, controllable character in a game. The final project returns to machines, building a complete, detailed spaceship for use in your sci-fi games.

R Deep Learning Essentials. A step-by-step guide to building deep learning models using TensorFlow, Keras, and MXNet - Second Edition

Mark Hodnett, Joshua F. Wiley

Deep learning is a powerful subset of machine learning that is very successful in domains such as computer vision and natural language processing (NLP). This second edition of R Deep Learning Essentials will open the gates for you to enter the world of neural networks by building powerful deep learning models using the R ecosystem.This book will introduce you to the basic principles of deep learning and teach you to build a neural network model from scratch. As you make your way through the book, you will explore deep learning libraries, such as Keras, MXNet, and TensorFlow, and create interesting deep learning models for a variety of tasks and problems, including structured data, computer vision, text data, anomaly detection, and recommendation systems. You’ll cover advanced topics, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), transfer learning, and large-scale deep learning in the cloud. In the concluding chapters, you will learn about the theoretical concepts of deep learning projects, such as model optimization, overfitting, and data augmentation, together with other advanced topics.By the end of this book, you will be fully prepared and able to implement deep learning concepts in your research work or projects.