[opensourcedex]

black-hat-rust is a free, open source compliance & risk management project written in Rust and released under MIT. It has 4,403 GitHub stars, 440 forks and 7 open issues, and was last pushed 12 months ago. On this registry it ranks #20 of 45 tracked projects in Compliance & Risk Management, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

What is black-hat-rust?

What it is

Black Hat Rust is an applied offensive-security book written in the Rust programming language and published under an MIT-licensed repository. The project positions itself as a guide to the reasons and methods behind building offensive tools, rather than a general introduction to Rust or a tutorial for existing tools such as sqlmap and Metasploit. Its topics cover reconnaissance, exploitation, phishing, red-team work, bug bounty hunting, auditing, command-and-control, and implant development.

The concrete problem it addresses is the gap between learning a language and applying it to real offensive-security workflows. The README says the Rust Book teaches what Rust is, while this book aims to show why and how to use Rust for scanners, exploits, phishing toolkits, and implants. It presents offensive security as a broad field spanning cyber attacks, cybercrime, and cyberwar.

Key capabilities

  • It guides readers through building a multi-threaded scanner for mapping an attack surface, then refactoring it toward asynchronous Rust when I/O dominates runtime.
  • It explains how to extend a scanner with heterogeneous modules using trait objects and Rust's type system to structure larger software projects.
  • It covers fast web crawling for OSINT reconnaissance.
  • It describes finding vulnerabilities through automated fuzzing and then developing exploits with Rust's type and module systems.
  • It applies Rust to offensive artifacts named in the README and topics, including shellcodes, servers, phishing pages, beacons, C2, implants, and red-team tooling.

Who uses it and how

  • Developers who want to learn security use it as a from-theory-to-practice path for writing their own tools instead of only operating existing frameworks.
  • Security engineers who already know offensive workflows use it to learn Rust and idiomatic practices for building scanners, crawlers, exploits, and phishing-related tools.
  • Bug-bounty hunters and red-team practitioners use the topics and chapters to explore reconnaissance, exploitation, C2, implants, and phishing.

Getting started

Readers start by visiting the homepage and following the linked table-of-contents chapters, while the README also presents the book as a purchasable resource with free updates and DRM-free availability.

When to use it — and when not to

Use it when the goal is to learn how to build offensive-security tools in Rust from theory to practice, especially for reconnaissance, exploitation, phishing, C2, and implant-related topics. Do not use it as a ready-made product, as a beginner programming course, or as a substitute for existing tutorials about sqlmap and Metasploit. Its main limitation is that it supplies guidance and chapter links rather than an installable scanner, server, or phishing toolkit with deployment instructions.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Black Hat Rust

Applied offensive security with the Rust programming language

Buy the book now!

While the Rust Book does an excellent job teaching What is Rust, a book about Why and How to Rust was missing.

Summary

Whether in movies or mainstream media, hackers are often romanticized: they are painted as black magic wizards, nasty criminals, or, in the worst cases, as thieves with a hood and a crowbar. In reality, the spectrum of the profile of the attackers is extremely large, from the bored teenager exploring the internet to sovereign State's armies as well as the unhappy former employee.

What are the motivations of the attackers? How can they break seemingly so easily into any network? What do they do to their victims? We will put on our black hat and explore the world of offensive security, whether it be cyber attacks, cybercrimes, or cyberwar. Scanners, exploits, phishing toolkit, implants... From theory to practice, we will explore the arcane of offensive security and build our own offensive tools with the Rust programming language, Stack Overflow's most loved language for five years in a row.

Which programming language allows to craft shellcodes, build servers, create phishing pages? Before Rust, none! Rust is the long-awaited one-size-fits-all programming language meeting all those requirements thanks to its unparalleled guarantees and feature set. Here is why.

Free Updates and DRM Free, of course :)

Who this book is for

This is NOT a 1000th tutorial about sqlmap and Metasploit, nor will it teach you the fundamentals of programming.

Instead, it's a from-theory-to-practice guide and you may enjoy it if any of the following:

  • You keep screaming "show me the code!" when reading about cyber attacks and malwares
  • You are a developer and want to learn security
  • You are a security engineer and want to learn Rust programming
  • You want to learn real-world and idiomatic rust practices
  • You believe that the best defense is thinking like an attacker
  • You learn by building and love to look under the hood
  • You value simplicity and pragmatism
  • You develop your own tools and exploits with Python, Ruby, C, Java...
  • You want to learn real-world offensive security, not just pentesting
  • You want to start making money with bug bounty programs
  • You prefer getting things done over analysis paralysis

But I repeat, this book is NOT a computer science book.

Buy the book now!

Table of contents

Preface
1 - Introduction

Part I: Reconnaissance

2 - Multi-threaded attack surface discovery

How to perform effective reconnaissance? In this chapter, we will build a multi-threaded scanner in order to automate the mapping of the target.

3 - Going full speed with async

Unfortunately, when a program spends most of its time in I/O operations, multi-threading is not a panacea. We will learn how async makes Rust code really, really fast and refactor our scanner to async code.

4 - Adding modules with Trait objects

We will add more heterogeneous modules to our scanner and will learn how Rust's type system helps create properly designed large software projects.

5 - Crawling the web for OSINT

Leveraging all we learned previously, we will build an extremely fast web crawler to help us find the needles in the haystack the web is.

Part II: Exploitation

6 - Finding vulnerabilities

Once the external reconnaissance performed, it's time to find entry points. In this chapter we will learn how automated fuzzing can help us to find vulnerabilities that can be exploited to then gain access to our target's systems.

7 - Exploit development

Rust may not be as fast as python when it comes to iterating on quick scripts such as exploits, but as we will see, its powerful type and modules system make it nonetheless a weapon of choice.

8 - Writing shellcodes in Rust

Shellcode development is an ungrateful task. Writing assembly by hand is definitely not sexy. Fortunately for us, Rust, one more time, got our back! In this chapter we will learn how to write shellcodes in plain Rust with no_std.

9 - Phishing with WebAssembly

When they can't find exploitable hardware or software vulnerability, attackers usually fall back to what is often the weakest link in the chain: Humans. Again, Rust comes handy and will let us create advanced phishing pages by compiling to WebAssembly.

Part III: Implant development

10 - A modern RAT

A RAT (for Remote Access Tool), also known as implant or beacon, is a kind of software used to perform offensive operations on a target's machines. In this chapter we will build our own RAT communicating to a remote server and database.

11 - Securing communications with end-to-end encryption

The consequences of our own infrastructure being compromised or seized can be disastrous. We will add end-to-end encryption to our RAT's communication in order to secure its communications and avoid leaving traces on our servers.

12 - Going multi-platforms

Today's computing landscape is extremely fragmented. From Windows to macOS, we can't target only one Operating System to ensure the success of our operations. In this section we will see how Rust's ecosystem is extremely useful when it comes to cross-compilation.

13 - Turning into a worm to increase reach

Once the initial targets compromised, we will capitalize on Rust's excellent reusability to incorporate some parts of our initial scanner to turn our RAT into a worm and reach more targets only accessible from the target's internal network.

14 Conclusion

Now it's your turn to get things done!

Buy the book now!

FAQ

Can I pay with PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay?

Yes! You can now buy Black Hat Rust with PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay. Go Here to proceed.

What to do if I don't have a VAT number?

A European VAT number is optional, and you can skip the field or leave it empty if asked.

Community

Hey! Welcome you to the Black Hat Rustaceans gang! If you think something in the book or the code can be improved, please open an issue. Pull requests are also welcome :)

Newsletter

Want to stay updated? I'll write you once a week about avoiding complexity, hacking, and entrepreneurship.

https://kerkour.com/subscribe

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Changelog

You'll find all the updates in the

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is black-hat-rust free to use?

black-hat-rust is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does black-hat-rust do?

Applied offensive security with Rust - https://kerkour.com/black-hat-rust

What is black-hat-rust written in?

black-hat-rust is primarily written in Rust. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/skerkour/black-hat-rust, and it has 4,403 GitHub stars.