I didn’t personally sit over his shoulder as he did so, but I do believe Bejtlich read this book, and is not part of a reviewing “service” as you describe. I’m well aware of such services, and it just doesn’t make sense that he’d be a part of one, as I discussed above.

For what it’s worth, most people around here that I have recommended this book to haven’t “already read Windows Internals and a couple of device-driver-development books”, and got a lot out of the Windows material you didn’t like. It might not be what you’re personally looking for if you’re already knowledgable on those topics, but you can follow what’s going on in this book without a lot of pre-requisite knowledge and that’s a good thing for a lot of people.

As for the mention, I couldn’t find a review by Blunden for a Bejtlich book, but it’s entirely possible that he mentioned Bejtlich in the book at some point. Bejtlich has written so much on the TaoSecurity blog about cyberwarfare (among other topics), that it’s probably a good idea to cite some of it if your book has some discussion of the same material. I doubt that’d buy you much with Bejtlich, though, as his site’s popular (and good) enough to be quoted and cited in other works without any expectation that he reciprocates.

If there were some kind of arrangement or understanding, I’d have expected Bejtlich to be a little more prompt with his review, even. If you google: site:taosecurity.blogspot.com “rootkit arsenal” , you’ll notice two posts that show Bejtlich getting his copy in May of 2009, and it taking him almost exactly 11 months to get around to reviewing it. Not exactly great timing for generating buzz for it.

There’s plenty that’s messed up with computer security book publishing, and many reviewers are overly kind to peers in their field. I can understand why take reviews with a dose of skepticism, but I can assure you that it’s not the case with this one.

I find it hard to believe that he’s a “hired reviewer”, and I’m not sure that’s a concept that’d fly very far in this field. Bejtlich (and I, for that matter) may receive complimentary review copies, but it’s not what I would consider “payment”. Even at the minimum time and effort it would take to look at a book enough to write a convincing review, the amount of money a guy like Bejtlich could expect to make exercising his profession *far* exceeds the value of the book (and likely anything the publisher would be willing to pay for the review).

I haven’t read anything on this site: I got here while searching for reviews on Blunden’s book. Well, I’ll check it out in a store, I guess, hopeuflly B&N have it. It looks very enticing, but I’ll be careful. Blunden’s past books also looked great (but weren’t), and as far as Wordware, it’s a horror story. Very pretty books, but not one was any good that I looked at (I even bought a few, to my chagrin).

If I get to check it out, I’ll post an update. Take care, for now.

I didn’t know Bill Blunden at all until I saw his book in the vendor area at Defcon last year and looked him up to request a review copy of this book. After being in contact with him, though, I will say he’s a nice guy. If you read the other book reviews on this site, however, you’ll see that I’m not exactly kind to books just because they’re by nice guys (Jayson Street & Johnny Long come to mind).

There is a serving of Blunden’s opinion in The Rootkit Arsenal, and you might not like that. I never felt like it detracted from the technical content of the book, though, and it was pretty easy to sort out what you agree/disagree with, and keep it separate from the cold hard facts of rootkit techniques. Even if you completely disagree with his opinions, there’s plenty to learn from this book for most readers.

I honestly don’t know anything about the publisher, as this is the only book from them that I’ve read.

My advice: Check out Richard Bejtlich’s review, as he has a much better reputation than I do for computer security book reviews. I don’t believe he has any personal affiliation with Blunden, and he is well aware of what makes a bad book. Then browse over the content in Google Books.

Come back and let me know what you think!