Recently I had to find some books online, that I needed. The main reason I didn’t buy them was because of the price. Some of them tend to be really expensive (related to the amount of money I make in about a week and a half).
Thanks to a great open system called Internet you have so many resources, that you kind find almost everything. Here I will show you some ways I used in order to find the e-books I needed. I will start with the easiest and finish with the most complex.
Websites for downloading
All the books I need are in IT subjects. The website I use the most is it-ebooks. You can find thousands of books on line for free. Let’s say for example I want to find out about Hacking by using Metasploit. What I have to do is go up their search field and type Metasploit. What I will see is a list of books available to download. Let’s say for example I want to download Mastering Metasploit (which by the way is a great book/cookbook). Just click on the link and it will continue to the books page. Over there we can see some details about the Publisher, the writer and more. Bellow these options there is a download link for the book, also there is a link if you want to buy a paper book.
ps. There are some ads that look like download buttons that they are all fake ones. The real one is shown is the picture below.
More websites with free ebooks.
b-ok.cc (Probably the best) Seizedb-ok.org (Probably the best) Seizedfreebookspot.es Closed
ebookee.org
pdfgrab.net
bookguru.net (Mostly about financial and management)
gutenberg.orggen.lib.rus.ec (Another great source for ebooks) Closed
Deep Web search
Unluckily most of the good websites were seized by FBI last year. The best way in 2023 to find e-books is using Tor and accessing the famous Z-lib over Tor. While it may seem complicated, in reality is really simple. All you have to do is download and install “Tor Browser”, which is really easy and then create an account on Z-lib’s website.
You can download Tor from here, they support almost every Operating System (Tor Project).
After downloading and installing, you need to create an account and on Z-lib. Currently it offers 10 downloads per month with this method, which is enough for most of the people.
The onion url of Z-lib is: http://loginzlib2vrak5zzpcocc3ouizykn6k5qecgj2tzlnab5wcbqhembyd.onion .
Remember, this is an onion website, meaning it will only load in case you are going through Tor. Tor is a network that enables anonymous communication on the internet by routing user traffic through multiple encrypted relays.
Yandex search
Yandex Search is the leading search engine in Russia, providing web search and other related services to users primarily in the Russian-speaking world. Because it is not controlled by Google or any other international corporation, and the rules are not so strict, finding pirated content is really easier.
Google Custom search
This is some kind of formula, written by a hero that lives between us ( I really don’t know who is the person who made it), that will help you find the e-book of your choice. This link makes a search on a website based on some unknown filters it has but us does a great job. The only thing you have to do is just search for the title you are interested in, in the custom search field.
Torrent
In torrents you can find almost EVERYTHING. There are a lot of websites that work with torrents, and to help you find some of the torrent files the have, you can use a search engine like torrentz (the one I use the most). Some times torrentz won’t give you any accurate results, so you will have to search seperately on websites. The websites I use the most are, kickass and the pirate bay.
The reason I use those two, is that they have a system of rating the user that uploaded a file. You can see if the uploader is a trusted person, so you can download the file. Also is important to take a look at the comments before you start downloading. When people warn you that probably there is an infected file or anything better don’t download it. And even if this is your last resort, before opening the downloaded file scan it with your Antivirus (or online if you don’t have an AV).
IRC
IRC is probably the most complex way to download an e-book but you will find amazing how many books someone can find online. There are a lot of softwares for IRC clients depending on your OS and if you want a free or paid one. In my case because I’m on a Mac I use LimeChat, that is simple and free. Here are some suggestions I have for you based on your OS.
Server & Channel
Probably there are a lot of channels you can use for ebooks. The one I used is the #ebooks on IRCHighway server. To connect to IRCHighway I had to do some settings, like the port for the ssl the url of the server. Just Add a Server and type the following.
You also have to fill some fields like your nickname, a name, some additional nicknames in case your main nickname is taken.
Next step is to join the channel. Just by typing /join #ebooks you can now see what’s going on, on this channel.
Finding titles
There are some bots on this channel that will do the work for you. let’s say for example I want to find the ebook I downloaded earlier, mastering Metasploit. What I have to do is go in the channel and type:
@search mastering metasploit
The form is @search (book’s title or author). This will cause some responses based on the amount of ebooks found. In my case it was only one. Then a pop up appears and I just have to accept the download. That download is a small file (zip that inside there is a txt file) with ALL the available books from the query I searched for.
Downloading the ebook
I just unzip the downloaded file and open the .txt file, in my case SearchBot_results_for_ mastering metasploit.txt .
Search results from SearchBot v2.22.28 by DukeLupus, searching dll written by Ook
Searched 9 lists for "mastering metasploit" , found 1 matches. Enjoy!
For easier searching, use sbClient script (also very fast local searches). You can get that script by typing @sbClient in the channel.
!patiencel Nipun Jaswal - Mastering Metasploit (epub).zip ::INFO:: 30.43 MiB
Now i can see that this is the book I was looking for and the format of the ebook is epub, which is fine for me. Now I have to go back to the channel and type the command for the book I want. In my case
!patiencel Nipun Jaswal - Mastering Metasploit (epub).zip
Accept the file again and wait a little bit until the download is complete.
When download is complete you have to unzip it and you will have your file ready.
ps. Check on your IRC settings so you won’t block incoming files, otherwise this method won’t work. In LimeChat that I use, by default you accept the incoming files.
Also if you know any other channels or Servers would be great to share. 🙂