technology

I disagree with the commenter above. NoStarch publishes some of the best security books. Personally, my expertise is in binary exploitation and reverse engineering. The Malware book is great for learning the basics of reverse engineering. Sure a lot of modern Malware is more advanced and using crazy, custom packers and anti-debug techniques. But you'll never learn how to write a custom unpacker if you haven't even learned how to read assembly or defeat basic anti-debugging techniques.

Similar with Hacking: The Art of Exploitation. Yes it largely focuses on exploiting vulnerable apps like it's 1995, no anti-exploit mitigations like NX, ASLR, stack cookies, etc. but binary security has been an iterative process. You won't understand NX or how/why you need a ROP chain if you don't already understand how stack overflows and shellcode work. Starting with a binary resembling one from the 90's is exactly how any class, course, training material, or book on binary exploitation will start, assuming it's intended for beginners.