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

Tools for anonymity in the Tor network

In this section, you will learn about the main tools that provide anonymity in the Tor network. We'll do this by learning how to connect to the Tor Browser and introducing other tools for controlling our Tor instance.

Connecting to the Tor network

The easy way to navigate through the Tor network is to use the Tor Browser, which is a modified version of Firefox that includes extensions such as Torbutton, NoScript, and HTTPS Everywhere.

The Tor Browser is configured to obtain the different routes and servers that we can connect to automatically. In addition to allowing you to browse with a high degree of anonymity, by closing a browsing session, confidential user data related to cookies and browsing history will be automatically deleted.

To connect to the Tor network, all you need to do is the following:

  1. Download the Tor Browser Bundle from https://www.torproject.org.
  2. Unzip it.
  3. Run the start-tor-browser script in...