A quick background on the RTFM, BTGM and Blue Team Handbooks, these were designed as references for the respective Cyber Security teams, the RTFM being targeted at Penetration Testers and the BTFM and Blue Team Handbook being for the Cyber defenders. The books differ slightly in their approach the Field Manuals being more the form of cheat sheets with lists of commands and tables of useful data e.g. if you want to run NMAP on a target you would go to the NMAP page and all the flags available for NMAP are listed to aid in its use along with a couple of examples and this requires some previous knowledge of the tools. Blue Team Handbook is more narrative and explanatory in nature giving simple but introductory information about processes and descriptions of tools. Also the Operators Handbook is aimed at Pen Testers and Cyber Defenders and would assist other IT professions.
The first thing you notice about the Handbook is the size, compared to the RTFM this is a fairly chunky handbook.
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| Operators Handbook, Blue Team Handbook and RTFM. |
The Operators Handbook follows a similar pattern to R& BTFMs in that the information is mostly tables of data and cheat sheets. There are a limited number of explanatory texts, one of the more detailed is under the OSINT section which breaks down into small explanatory texts before changing back to the lists.
For me an improvement over the predecessors is that all the tools are listed in alphabetical order, the RTFM broke them down into subject areas such as *nix, Networking and Tips and Tricks, so for me this was just a little too inconvenient to locate the information. The Operator Handbook however, if you are interested in Jenkins Exploits then you can head straight there.
At the start of each tools section is a line which indicates who the tool is for, What type of tool it is, and the operating system or service it relates to, under the section for MIMIKATZ this line tells us its for RED TEAM, is for ESCALATE PRIV and is WINDOWS based, and then follows with a quick two line introduction to the tool and then starts listing the useful commands and lists. The last few of the 436 pages are space for your own notes so you can add anything you need at this point.
There is an impressive list of tools and techniques within this Handbook, although I did find a few things that we use that were absent. This would be exceptionally useful to have at your fingertips when you need a refresher for those tools that you just don't use that often, or to quickly check something whilst you are learning a new system. The book weighs in at 693 grams and would require consideration before putting in your pack and carrying around every day.
I'm happy with my purchase and will keep this copy to hand, probably moving this to work, for the price I might purchase the Kindle version to avoid the volume an wight in my backpack on public transport. This would be a handy reference guide for anyone starting life as either a Pen Tester or in a more defensive Cyber-Security role.
As well as the Paperback copy selling for £11.76 there is a Kindle Version for £8.08, the copy I have is V1 which was released on 02 APR 2020
