Assembly Language Programming Books

The IDA Pro Book: The Unofficial Guide to the World's Most Popular Disassembler

Chris Eagle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

No source code? No problem. With IDA Pro, you live in a source code-optional world. IDA can automatically analyze the millions of opcodes that make up an executable and present you with a disassembly. But at that point, your work is just beginning. With The IDA Pro Book, you'll learn how to turn that mountain of mnemonics into something you can actually use.

Hailed by the creator of IDA Pro as the "long-awaited" and "information-packed" guide to IDA, The IDA Pro Book covers everything from the very first steps to advanced automation techniques. While other disassemblers slow your analysis with inflexibility, IDA invites you to customize its output for improved readability and usefulness. You'll save time and effort as you learn to:

• Identify known library routines, so you can focus your analysis on other areas of the code
• Extend IDA to support new processors and filetypes, making disassembly possible for new or obscure architectures
• Explore popular plug-ins that make writing IDA scripts easier, allow collaborative reverse engineering, and much more
• Utilize IDA's built-in debugger to tackle obfuscated code that would defeat a stand-alone disassembler

You'll still need serious assembly skills to tackle the toughest executables, but IDA makes things a lot easier. Whether you're analyzing the software on a black box or conducting hard-core vulnerability research, a mastery of IDA Pro is crucial to your success. Take your skills to the next level with The IDA Pro Book.

Learning UML 2.0 (Learning)

Russ Miles, Kim Hamilton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Since its original introduction in 1997, the Unified Modeling Language has revolutionized software development. Every integrated software development environment in the world--open-source, standards-based, and proprietary--now supports UML and, more importantly, the model-driven approach to software development. This makes learning the newest UML standard, UML 2.0, critical for all software developers--and there isn't a better choice than this clear, step-by-step guide to learning the language." "--Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO, OMG"

If you're like most software developers, you're building systems that are increasingly complex. Whether you're creating a desktop application or an enterprise system, complexity is the big hairy monster you must manage.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) helps you manage this complexity. Whether you're looking to use UML as a blueprint language, a sketch tool, or as a programming language, this book will give you the need-to-know information on how to apply UML to your project. While there are plenty of books available that describe UML, "Learning UML 2.0" will show you how to use it. Topics covered include: Capturing your system's requirements in your model to help you ensure that your designs meet your users' needs Modeling the parts of your system and their relationships Modeling how the parts of your system work together to meet your system's requirements Modeling how your system moves into the real world, capturing how your system will be deployed

Engaging and accessible, this book shows you how to use UML to craft and communicate your project's design. Russ Miles and Kim Hamilton have written a pragmatic introduction to UML based onhard-earned practice, not theory. Regardless of the software process or methodology you use, this book is the one source you need to get up and running with UML 2.0. Additional information including exercises can be found at www.learninguml2.com.

Russ Miles is a software engineer for General Dynamics UK, where he works with Java and Distributed Systems, although his passion at the moment is Aspect Orientation and, in particular, AspectJ. Kim Hamilton is a senior software engineer at Northrop Grumman, where she's designed and implemented a variety of systems including web applications and distributed systems, with frequent detours into algorithms development.

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1

Dmitry Vostokov

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Languages & Tools -> Assembly Language Programming

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An excellent Windows debugging resource for the real world! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

As an Escalation Engineer for a large software company, live debugging and post-mortem memory dump analysis is a part of my daily routine. I often find myself debugging some strange/unique problems, where I am sometimes stuck staring at stacktraces wondering where do I go next... In these times I would often find myself searching the web, trying to find more information, which would mostly leadme to http://www.dumpanalysis.org... On this site, I usually find that Dmitry not only encountered a similar situation before, but has fully documented and classified in-depth debugging information regarding the issue.

It is no surprise that the contents of his book (Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1) contained a vast collection of Windows debugging knowledge, fully illustrated, with great explanations of complex topics broken down nicely so that even a beginner can hit the ground running with Windows debugging. This book is a great resource for both beginners wanting to explore the realm of Windows debugging, as well as for professionals who perform debugging (both live and post-mortem) that need a reference for various memory patterns.

In the past it has always been difficult to find a solid source for Windows debugging information, as bits and pieces of this knowledge has been scattered across various sources. It is nice to be able to pick up one resource such as this book, and follow it through to the end and actually build a strong Windows debugging foundation. Complete with code examples, illustrations and screenshots, this is a must have for anyone who is serious about debugging on Windows.

Cheers!
KappA

Editorial Review:

This is a revised, edited, cross-referenced and thematically organized volume of selected DumpAnalysis.org blog posts about crash dump analysis and debugging written in 2006 - 2007 for software engineers developing and maintaining products on Windows platforms, technical support and escalation engineers dealing with complex software issues and general Windows users.

Write Great Code, Volume 2: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level

Randall Hyde

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The computer book you'll NEVER read.. 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 11 people found this review helpful.

If you're like most IT people out in the workforce today, you've got pressures from all sides - deadlines, keeping current with changes in platforms, hardware, software tools, etc. Gah! It never ends!

So, you pick up these "Write Great Code" books, thinking that you'll be a better programmer.

And it's interesting in a way that you remember when you were just getting into the IT field as a student and later as an employee and maybe now as a consultant or contractor.

But, then you realize that this is like thinking about how your car's components are working while you're driving madly to work on some beltway. Only your skills as a driver can keep you from getting hit by a big semi, not the working knowledge of your V8 engine. Guys who work on their cars on the weekend, know more about them than you do, but hey, it gets you to work and back.

And so, you sigh and put the book down and concentrate on your SQL, or your VB or whatever else keeps you employed.

Why?

Because your users and your manager don't care about what goes on at the machine level. They want the deliverables NOW. The efficiency of your code is of no importance to them, though it is to you.

However, with enough discipline and some thought to what you're doing, you CAN make this book work for you, and get an edge over someone else's sloppy code and maybe even save yourself some programming time.

Because this book is for the guys who are the computer counterparts of the greasy-looking guys on the street who could tell you what's wrong with your car, even if you can't.

Editorial Review:

The second volume in the Write Great Code series supplies the critical information that today's computer science students don't often get from college and university courses: How to carefully choose their high-level language statements to produce efficient code. Write Great Code, Volume 2: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level, teaches software engineers how compilers translate high-level language statements and data structures into machine code. Armed with this knowledge, a software engineer can make an informed choice concerning the use of those high-level structures to help the compiler produce far better machine code--all without having to give up the productivity and portability benefits of using a high-level language.

Professional Assembly Language (Programmer to Programmer)

Richard Blum

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent Book 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I'd just ditched windows in favor of an Ubuntu system and I wanted to do some assembly language programming. This book was exactly the ticket.

The book explores a comprehensive introduction to assembly on Linux. Another reviewer objected to the word "Professional" in the title. Admittedly, this book is not an advanced guide, being aimed instead at those just getting into assembly. But the book is not for novice programmers, per se. The tutorial begins with a pretty quick overview of assembly language and its place in the programming milieu, then gives some information on the IA-32 platform and architecture. After that, you get an introduction to the tools you'll be using in the book, and then you're programming. It's fast, but not too fast and from that it's pretty obvious that the "Professional" is referring not to techniques or subject matter, but to the target audience -- professionals or relatively experienced programmers getting into practical assembly for the first time.

For me, I've found the book to be absolutely perfect: competently written, exploring the toolset I find most interesting, and promoting free software and Linux. Moreover, the knowledge I'm gleaning will be practically useful, I believe, an any OS running on the IA-32 platform. Windows uses different tools, and the opcode syntax is different, but it's not night and day -- more like late morning/early afternoon. The processor concepts and knowledge transfer cleanly.

If you're not running Linux or have access to a Unix-like system (Cygwin on Windows would probably do fine) then this book isn't for you. Also, if processor concepts are absolutely novel to you -- e.g., you think a register is something used to make change at a checkout line -- or you're still learning about for-loops or think HTML pages are "programs", then this book won't make you happy.

But if you want to delve into assembly quickly and you like working with Linux or Unix, this is your ticket. Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

• Unlike high-level languages such as Java and C++, assembly language is much closer to the machine code that actually runs computers; it's used to create programs or modules that are very fast and efficient, as well as in hacking exploits and reverse engineering
• Covering assembly language in the Pentium microprocessor environment, this code-intensive guide shows programmers how to create stand-alone assembly language programs as well as how to incorporate assembly language libraries or routines into existing high-level applications
• Demonstrates how to manipulate data, incorporate advanced functions and libraries, and maximize application performance
• Examples use C as a high-level language, Linux as the development environment, and GNU tools for assembling, compiling, linking, and debugging

Assembly Language Step-by-step: Programming with DOS and Linux (with CD-ROM)

Jeff Duntemann

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Microsoft -> Operating Systems -> MS DOS
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The bestselling guide to assembly language-now updated and expanded to include coverage of Linux

This new edition of the bestselling guide to assembly programming now covers DOS and Linux! The Second Edition begins with a highly accessible overview of the internal operations of the Intel-based PC and systematically covers all the steps involved in writing, testing, and debugging assembly programs.

Expert author Jeff Duntemann then presents working example programs for both the DOS and Linux operating systems using the popular free assembler NASM. He also includes valuable information on how to use procedures and macros, plus rare explanations of assembly-level coding for Linux, all of which combine to offer a comprehensive look at the complexities of assembly programming for Intel processors.

Providing you with the foundation to create executable assembly language programs, this book:
* Explains how to use NASM-IDE, a simple program editor and assembly-oriented development environment
* Details the most used elements of the 86-family instruction set
* Teaches about DEBUG, the single most useful tool you have as an assembly language programmer
* Examines the operations that machine instructions force the CPU to perform
* Discusses the process of memory addressing
* Covers coding for Linux

The CD-ROM includes:
* Net-Wide Assembler (NASM) for both DOS and Linux
* NASM-IDE, a command shell and code editor for DOS
* ALINK, a free linker for DOS programming
* All program code examples from the book

GDB Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))

Arnold Robbins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Many Linux and Unix developers are familiar with the GNU debugger (GBD), the invaluable open source tool for testing, fixing, and retesting software. And since GDB can be ported to Windows, Microsoft developers and others who use this platform can also take advantage of this amazing free software that allows you to see exactly what's going on inside of a program as it's executing. This new pocket guide gives you a convenient quick reference for using the debugger with several different programming languages, including C, C++, Java, Fortran and Assembly. The GNU debugger is the most useful tool during the testing phase of the software development cycle because it helps you catch bugs in the act. You can see what a program was doing at the moment it crashed, and then readily pinpoint and correct problem code. With the GDB Pocket Reference on hand, the process is quick and painless. The book covers the essentials of using GBD is a testing environment, including how to specify a target for debugging and how to make a program stop on specified conditions. This handy guide also provides details on using the debugger to examine the stack, source files and data to find the cause of program failure-and then explains ways to use GBD to make quick changes to the program for further testing and debugging. The ability to spot a bug in real time with GDB can save you hours of frustration, and having a quick way to refer to GBD's essential functions is key to making the process work. Once you get your hands on the GDB Pocket Reference, you'll never let go!

Assembly Language for Intel-Based Computers (5th Edition)

Kip Irvine

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

You will learn some things, but you will encounter lots of errata and poor organization 2 out of 5 stars.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I have read a lot of programming text books, but I have never seen so much errata before. My fellow classmates and I are amazed at the amount of errors.

It all started early with the book claiming that George Bool invented the Analytical Engine, instead of Charles Babbage.

We also wonder if the author just cranks out new editions and just adds a few things and doesn't update the rest of the book. It took me awhile to figure out the solution to an assignment, right out of the book, that didn't compensate for newer processors(or any processor in recent history). Actually it seems like it hasn't been changed for 7 years or longer or it's just plain errata. So, I was wondering for a long while why my programming assignment would not work. I finally figured out the book was the reason. Later on there was a programming exercise that required adding to existing code in the book, but when adding lines, it would not work. I would get jump too far errors.

This book could use some better organization too. Simply putting related things together in a chapter is not enough. Yes there is an index and appendices, but the organization in the chapters is poor. Better explanation would be great too.

I guess I am just spoiled by Deitel's books. They are great. Too bad they don't have one on x86 Assembly.

This book was supposed to have a cd-rom disc, but I don't think anyone got one. I sure didn't. The files on the cd-rom are required for the programming assignments to work. Luckily you can download the files off the web site. If you figure out that the files might be on the web site and you go there.

Finally, the binding is weak, I had to re-glue mine within a couple of weeks of receiving a new copy. My professor complained about the binding too. It's too thin(or something) to hold up.

MIPS Assembly Language Programming

Robert Britton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent for Assembly Language beginners 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This book in an excellent introduction to Assembly language. What I thought to be very difficult programming language isn't actually such a monster after all.

Just a "warning," the assembly language instruction set here is smaller and the processor architecture is less complex than, say, an Intel x86 processor. However, if you want to get a feel of how Assembly language is, this is definitely a good book.

The book isn't monstrous in pages so that's a plus. What I like about this fact is, I can actually reread the chapter if I don't think I understood it enough.

I gave it 5 stars because although it is not perfect, it suits my needs for information beyond enough.

Editorial Review:

For freshman/sophomore-level courses in Assembly Language Programming, Introduction to Computer Organization, and Introduction to Computer Architecture. Students using this text will gain an understanding of how the functional components of modern computers are put together and how a computer works at the machine language level. MIPS architecture embodies the fundamental design principles of all contemporary RISC architectures. By incorporating this text into their courses, instructors will be able to prepare their undergraduate students to go on to upper-division computer organization courses.

ARM Assembly Language - an Introduction

J., R. Gibson

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Introductory & Beginning -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is THE book to learn correctly ARM assembly language programming. The author explains everything, even the aspects that seems obvious for expert in ARM and that are a real pain to bigginers. Gibson also succeeded at keeping his book independent from a specific platform, or specific cpu family. The book starts with very short and easy programs and goes deeper in explaining in details all aspects of the instruction set.
I really appreciated it. With the knowlege you got from this book, you can dive in ANY other advanced book on ARM (even ARM doc). You'll be for sure able to read and understand any ASM source code (if you really practice a lot and do all exercices of this book of course).
I contacted the author by mail for various questions, and I must say that I got answers very quickly and M Gibson gave really a lot of interrest and really analysed the problems.
Really very nice.

Editorial Review:

The ARM core is probably the most widely used embedded central processing unit incorporated in programmed electronic systems. Millions of products with an ARM core are sold every day. ARM cores are components in so many electronic products that ARM is increasingly chosen as the main CPU example for electronic engineering course. This is an introductory text describing the ARM assembly language and its use for simple tasks. It is suitable for students who have not previously used any assembly language. Features of ARM that differ from other common microcontrollers are emphasised so it is also an introduction for the professional using an ARM device for the first time.