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

Building an HTTP client with urllib.request

The urllib.request package is the recommended Python standard library package for HTTP tasks. The urllib package has a simpler interface and it has the capacity to manage all tasks related to HTTP requests.

The urllib module allows access to any resource published on the network (web page, files, directories, images, and so on) through various protocols (HTTP, FTP, and SFTP). To start consuming a web service, we have to import the following libraries:

#! /usr/bin/env python3
import urllib.request
import urllib.parse

Using the urlopen function, an object similar to a file is generated in which to read from the URL. This object has methods such as read, readline, readlines, and close, which work exactly the same as in file objects, although we are actually working with wrapper methods that abstract us from using low-level sockets.

Tip

The urllib.request module allows access to a resource published on the internet through its...