Gustavo Duarte’s Great Internals Series

I’ve spent some time looking at these posts over on Gustavo Duarte’s blog today, and I am very impressed.  Gustavo has taken the time to write an entire series of posts on x86 internals, focusing on how memory works and the boot-up process.  He uses Linux and, to a lesser extent, Windows in his examples, and has really great illustrations and diagrams of all the concepts.  Combine that with an excellent writing style and links to good reference material, and you have one of the most accessible and readable introductions to these topics that I’ve ever seen.  

Here are links to the topics from his “Internals” series, although his other writings are worth checking out too:

• Motherboard, Chipsets, and the Memory Map
• How Computers Boot Up
• The Kernel Boot Process
• Memory Translation and Segmentation
• CPU Rings, Privilege, and Protection
• What Your Computer Does While You Wait
• Cache: A Place For Concealment and Safekeeping
• Getting Physical With Memory
• Anatomy of a Program in Memory

These are core concepts for those in the areas of vulnerability analysis, exploit development, and (good) penetration testing to know, so read up :).

I ran across this blog from a link to the most recent post earlier this morning, and unfortunately I spent enough time at the site that I can’t even remember now where I found it.  Otherwise I would give some credit to person I’m following on twitter or RSS that linked it.  If that person happens to be you, leave a comment to claim your fame :).