Book Image

Python: Penetration Testing for Developers

By : Christopher Duffy, Mohit , Cameron Buchanan, Andrew Mabbitt, Terry Ip, Dave Mound, Benjamin May
Book Image

Python: Penetration Testing for Developers

By: Christopher Duffy, Mohit , Cameron Buchanan, Andrew Mabbitt, Terry Ip, Dave Mound, Benjamin May

Overview of this book

Cybercriminals are always one step ahead, when it comes to tools and techniques. This means you need to use the same tools and adopt the same mindset to properly secure your software. This course shows you how to do just that, demonstrating how effective Python can be for powerful pentesting that keeps your software safe. Comprising of three key modules, follow each one to push your Python and security skills to the next level. In the first module, we’ll show you how to get to grips with the fundamentals. This means you’ll quickly find out how to tackle some of the common challenges facing pentesters using custom Python tools designed specifically for your needs. You’ll also learn what tools to use and when, giving you complete confidence when deploying your pentester tools to combat any potential threat. In the next module you’ll begin hacking into the application layer. Covering everything from parameter tampering, DDoS, XXS and SQL injection, it will build on the knowledge and skills you learned in the first module to make you an even more fluent security expert. Finally in the third module, you’ll find more than 60 Python pentesting recipes. We think this will soon become your trusted resource for any pentesting situation. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: ? Learning Penetration Testing with Python by Christopher Duffy ? Python Penetration Testing Essentials by Mohit ? Python Web Penetration Testing Cookbook by Cameron Buchanan,Terry Ip, Andrew Mabbitt, Benjamin May and Dave Mound
Table of Contents (32 chapters)
Python: Penetration Testing for Developers
Python: Penetration Testing for Developers
Credits
Preface
Bibliography
Index

Understanding protection mechanisms


There are entire books dedicated to some of the tools out there for administrators and developers, which will prevent many exploits. They include items such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), which would stop code like ours from working if the code and OS were configured to take advantage of it. This is done by preventing execution of data on the stack. We can bypass DEP by simply overwriting the Structured Exception Handling (SEH) to run our own code instead.

Stack Canaries, which are basically mathematical constructs in the stack, check when the return pointer is called. If the value has changed then something has gone wrong and an exception is raised. If an attacker determines the value the guard is checking for, it can be injected into the shellcode to prevent an exception.

Finally, there is Address Space Layer Randomization (ASLR), which randomizes locations in memory we take advantage of. ASLR is much tougher to beat than the other two, but it basically...