.Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

[Donald Darden]

This text is in a PDF document that is available online through the following link:

http://www.sauronz.com/manuales/no_starch_press-hacking__the_art_of_exploitation.pdf

It gives some background to the concept of "Hacking", which is the effort to maximize the potential found in programmable devices, and gets into topics related to how computer architecture is organized and accessed.  It would probably be a good read for anyone interested in pushing their understanding in this area.  The examples given are written in C, but are short enough to be adapted to another language.