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

Getting information on DNS servers with DNSPython

In this section, we will create a DNS client in Python and see how this client obtains information about name servers, mail servers, and IPV4/IPV6 addresses.

DNS protocol

DNS stands for Domain Name Server, the domain name service used to link IP addresses with domain names. DNS is a globally-distributed database of mappings between hostnames and IP addresses. It is an open and hierarchical system with many organizations choosing to run their own DNS servers. These servers allow other machines to resolve the requests that originate from the internal network itself to resolve domain names.

The DNS protocol is used for different purposes. The most common are the following:

  • Names resolution: Given the complete name of a host, it can obtain its IP address.
  • Reverse address resolution: It is the reverse mechanism to the previous one. It can, given an IP address, obtain the name associated with it.
  • Mail servers resolution...