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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

BIOS Disassembly Ninjutsu English Edition Status Update

After much waiting finally I received the contract termination document for the English edition of BIOS Disassembly Ninjutsu Uncovered. I plan to print the book in Indonesia and make it available again for those interested. The book will differ a bit from the book published by A-List in which it will contain a tad more materials because the original (unedited) manuscript actually a bit more than 450 pages ,i.e. 579 pages to be exact but it has to be cut-down to 450 pages due to the contract terms. However, the Russian version of the book is based on the complete manuscript and doesn't contain such a restriction.

All in all, I will announce when the book is ready to be sold and where it will be sold and how to purchase one, considering that I live in Indonesia. If anyone has idea how I can make it available, don't hesitate to give your comments. I'd love to hear it.


UPDATE

I'm currently in talks with NoStarch Press to re-publish the book, very probably with some content revisions and updates. Stay tuned.


Post a Comment

24 comments:

Linuxer said...

Great job!
I think is good idea to make it as ebook and sell it at Amazon or other ebooks sellers.

Anonymous said...

I love your work, though I'm still trying to catch up in order to be able to understand the whole picture...

Here's my question :

You surely are aware that Geocities is about to be shut down by Yahoo!(on 26th October, if I'm not mistaken).

So, to what place are you planning to move all the data you gathered there (http://www.geocities.com/mamanzip/) ?!?

Anonymous said...

Hey there! You're the best, keep up!

I have a question for you : since Geocities is about to be shut down (26th of October, If I'm not mistaken), to what place are you planning to move all the data you gathered there (http://www.geocities.com/mamanzip/)?

Cheers,

Darmawan Salihun said...

Yes, I'm aware of the geocities closing. I'm currently in the process of moving all of the articles into this blog. I just haven't got the time too busy right now with college matters. I will announce it once it's done to various forums and all of my blogs.

Anonymous said...

Ok, thanks a lot ! ...and my apologies for the double post...

Darmawan Salihun said...

Hello, no problem :D

Anonymous said...

lulu.com might be another option for a printed paper version of your book.
Or maybe: just offer the book for free somewhere (PirateBay.com?) as a bit-torrented .pdf file.
Am interested specifically in aspects of editing a P35 Biostar board's .bst bios file; for use with installation of Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. Common editing tools don't seem to work; i.e. CBROM 1.95 for DOS prompt, or for DSDTSE 1.21 for OSX.

Darmawan Salihun said...

Well, I won't offer the entire book as free download. But, it's possible that I will publish overview of some parts for free as small PDF files in the very near future.

Tropicalmonkey said...

It would be easier for every one to purchase, if you offered a PDF version for sale. Then again, I dont know how you can prevent piracy.

Lawrence Donald said...

Hi Darmawan, will your book cover how to remotely modify the BIOS?

Darmawan Salihun said...

Hello Lawrence,
I don't know how you define remote modification. However, to remotely modify a BIOS, you need to be able to know the exact system configuration of the target remote system. The chapter on WBEM in my book talked about how to obtain such configuration. I didn't elaborate on how to remotely modify the BIOS, because once you get admnistrator privilege in the target system, you can do that by flashing a modified BIOS by crafting specialized application for that. I covered the application development for Windows and Linux in my book. I hope, this answers your question.

Cheers

Darmawan Salihun said...

Hello Tropicalmonkey,

Yes, piracy is a problem at this stage because I haven't monetize the book to the level to cover up my expenses in the research I conducted for the book materials. Then again, probably my publisher ripped me off back then. In any case I will make an interim release of the book with a little bit more materials than the previous version.

Igor Skochinsky said...

You can publish the ebook yourself on www.SmashWords.com. Also, did you try contacting O'Reilly or No Starch Press? I think your book fits No Starch profile quite well, considering they published The IDA Pro Book (it was really nicely done) and some other books on security and hardware hacking.

Darmawan Salihun said...

Well, thanks Igor for your suggestion. Now, I'm in talks with No Starch Press.

BrianWaite said...

Darmawan,

Sorry for the delayed reply. You can reach me at Ujustwaite(at)gmail.com. Look forward to talking to you.

Brian

Unknown said...

Hi Darmawan.

I was really dying to get hold of your book, but everywhere I tried, it's out of stock:-(. Now that you gave us some hope that you might be publishing the book sometime in near future, I was just curious about something. Since UEFI seems to be replacing legacy BIOS in coming years, do you intend to provide working in UEFI environment in your next edition?

Thanks,
Arindam

Darmawan Salihun said...

Hi Arindam,

Actually, I want to cover UEFI and Linux BIOS. But, given the time constraint to get the book to market. I might miss it in the upcoming update. UEFI and LinuxBIOS could be out in a book sometime after that. However, a rather short glimpse over UEFI in current BIOS implementation very probably will be included. The priorities at the moment is on PCI Express, HyperTransport updates, x86-64 impact on the present day BIOS and some other that I couldn't elaborate yet.

Unknown said...

Hi Darmawan,
I have been searching book stores all over, but couldn't find a single copy of your book, or atleast a copy which can be shipped to my country (India). I remember, sometime back you mentioned releasing your book in pdf format as an option. Is that still possible?

Thanks,
Arindam

Darmawan Salihun said...

Hi Arindam,
Unfortunately, I cannot release a free PDF version for some new NDA reason. Anyway, you can wait for the second edition of the book which is already in the works (http://bioshacking.blogspot.com/2009/12/bios-disassembly-ninjutsu-uncovered-2nd.html). It should be finished in about 2 and a half months. It will have PDF version, kindle and so on. Updated materials will also be in the book. The update will be more than 15% of the original book.

Unknown said...

Thanks Darmawan. I will be eagerly waiting for your book:-). BTW, I didn't actually mean that you give me the PDF version of your book for free, rather pay for it in some way:-).

rootkid said...

is the book being sell in indonesia too.

Darmawan Salihun said...

@rootkid: you will have to buy from amazon or the likes. The 2nd edition will be published by no starch press :)

paul smith said...

Hey there. Any updates on where to buy your book and where it could be shipped to?

Cheers

Darmawan Salihun said...

Hi Paul, if you're talking about the second edition. It's still not finished. The first edition is on torrent. Somebody uploaded it (he contacted beforehand).