Start here. Start with the second one - 'From n00b to l33t: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering'.

"This workshop is a 1-2 hour introduction to what reverse engineering is. It assumes no knowledge of assembly and is done on paper worksheets rather than a computer setup for accessibility and to make the most efficient use of time."

It's by Maddie Stone, who's a Security Researcher at Google Project Zero.

She also has Android app reverse engineering

https://www.ragingrock.com//pages/tutorials.html

Later, check out this book:

Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering by Eldad Eilam

https://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-E...

I'm by no means an expert but these are some of the links/books I've found informative.

Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit [1] Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering [2] The IDA Pro Book [3]

The iOS Hacker's Handbook [4] was interesting as a sort of case study on exploiting and hacking embedded hardware.

Mostly what I've found, though, is just starting with a question and googling the answer yield the most results. For example, see mention of a stack overflow attack google how and why stack overflow attacks work (or don't) and once that side of things is understood the thought process behind finding them becomes easier to understand, although not really easier to do (for me, at least).

[1] http://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Ei...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/IDA-Pro-Book-Unofficial-Disassembler/d...

[4] http://www.amazon.com/iOS-Hackers-Handbook-Charlie-Miller/dp...

http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Ei...

I loved this book as a kid: http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Ei...

It's probably a bit out of date now, but my dog-eared copy is still a good read. Ah, nostalgia. There once were days when I dreamed that a CS degree would make me as a god; the silly thoughts of a child. Now I know that it is a _PhD_ which makes gods of men.

For learning reverse engineering, I would recommend the book Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering[1] by Eldad Eilam.

I'm not sure what good beginner resources for learning assembly programming are, but either way, you'll probably want a copy of the Intel instruction set reference manuals[2] (and maybe the other Intel/AMD manuals[3]).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Ei...

[2] vol1: http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/manual/253666.pdf vol2: http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/manual/253667.pdf

[3] Intel: http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/ AMD: http://developer.amd.com/documentation/pages/default.aspx

Great article, it's rare that you see good introductory materials on binary patching (and other reversing-related subjects). If you're interested in learning more, I can't recommend this book enough: http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Ei...