Review by Ryan Linn, CISSP, MCSE, GPEN

After attending DEFCON in August and seeing the overwhelming interest in this book, I was eager to dive into The IDA Pro Book by Chris Eagle.  Chris Eagle's team, School of Root, won the “Capture the Flag” event at DEFCON this year and Chris gave a presentation on CollabREate, a tool that integrates with IDA Pro to allow collaboration in reverse engineering (RE).  All of that together - with the fact that the book sold out – screamed that this book should quickly make it to the top of my list.
         
Once I had the book in-hand, the cover alone offered some insight into what was to come.  The quote on the front of the book is an endorsement from the creator of IDA Pro. The image on the front is a throwback to the Operation game by Milton Bradley, which reminds me of how I felt when I got started doing reverse engineering. I am not a professional Reverse Engineer or Malware Analyst, however, my coding background and my current position as a security professional at SAS affords the opportunity to dabble. This puts me in the perfect middle ground of being able to understand the material as well as assess its ability to teach.