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 httpx

The httpx package is the recommended Python standard library package for HTTP and asynchronous tasks in Python 3.7. This module has a simpler interface, and it also has the capacity to manage all tasks related to asynchronous requests.

This module is compatible with requests and with the version of the HTTP/2 protocol, which offers a series of improvements at the performance level, such as the compression of the headers that are sent in the requests.

This module supports both versions HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. The main difference between these two versions is that the HTTP/2 version is a protocol based on binary data instead of textual data.

HTTP/2 is a big new version of the HTTP protocol, offering much more effective transport with possible performance advantages. HTTP/2 does not change the core semantics of the request or response, but does change the way data is transmitted from and to the server.

You can install the httpx module on your...