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

Generating keys securely with the secrets and hashlib modules

In this section, we are going to review the main modules Python provides for generating keys and passwords in a secure way.

Generating keys securely with the secrets module

The secrets module is used to generate cryptographically strong random numbers, suitable for managing data such as passwords, user authentication, security tokens, and related secrets.

In general, the use of random numbers is common in various scientific computing applications and cryptographic applications. With the help of the secrets module, we can generate reliable random data that can be used by cryptographic operations.

In particular, secrets are recommended to be used preferably over the generation of pseudo-random numbers using the random module, which is designed for modeling and simulation, and not for security or cryptography.

The secrets module derives its implementation from the os.urandom() and SystemRandom() methods that...