Book Image

Mastering Python for Networking and Security - Second Edition

By : José Ortega
Book Image

Mastering Python for Networking and Security - Second Edition

By: José Ortega

Overview of this book

It’s now more apparent than ever that security is a critical aspect of IT infrastructure, and that devastating data breaches can occur from simple network line hacks. As shown in this book, combining the latest version of Python with an increased focus on network security can help you to level up your defenses against cyber attacks and cyber threats. Python is being used for increasingly advanced tasks, with the latest update introducing new libraries and packages featured in the Python 3.7.4 recommended version. Moreover, most scripts are compatible with the latest versions of Python and can also be executed in a virtual environment. This book will guide you through using these updated packages to build a secure network with the help of Python scripting. You’ll cover a range of topics, from building a network to the procedures you need to follow to secure it. Starting by exploring different packages and libraries, you’ll learn about various ways to build a network and connect with the Tor network through Python scripting. You will also learn how to assess a network's vulnerabilities using Python security scripting. Later, you’ll learn how to achieve endpoint protection by leveraging Python packages, along with writing forensic scripts. By the end of this Python book, you’ll be able to use Python to build secure apps using cryptography and steganography techniques.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Python Environment and System Programming Tools
4
Section 2: Network Scripting and Extracting Information from the Tor Network with Python
8
Section 3: Server Scripting and Port Scanning with Python
12
Section 4: Server Vulnerabilities and Security in Python Modules
16
Section 5: Python Forensics

Understanding vulnerabilities and exploits

A vulnerability is an error in the code of our application, or in the configuration that it produces, that an attacker can use to change the behavior of the application, such as injecting code or accessing private data.

A vulnerability also can be a weakness in the security of a system that can be exploited to gain access to it. These can be exploited in two ways: remotely and locally.

A remote attack is one that is made from a different machine than the one being attacked, while a local attack is one performed, as its name implies, locally on the machine being attacked. These attacks are based on a series of techniques designed to gain access and elevate privileges on that machine.

One of the main problems we have with automatic scanners is that they cannot test for all types of vulnerabilities and can give false positives that have to be investigated and analyzed manually. The non-detection of some vulnerabilities and the classification...