Book Image

Python Penetration Testing Essentials - Second Edition

By : Mohit Raj
Book Image

Python Penetration Testing Essentials - Second Edition

By: Mohit Raj

Overview of this book

This book gives you the skills you need to use Python for penetration testing (pentesting), with the help of detailed code examples. We start by exploring the basics of networking with Python and then proceed to network hacking. Then, you will delve into exploring Python libraries to perform various types of pentesting and ethical hacking techniques. Next, we delve into hacking the application layer, where we start by gathering information from a website. We then move on to concepts related to website hacking—such as parameter tampering, DDoS, XSS, and SQL injection. By reading this book, you will learn different techniques and methodologies that will familiarize you with Python pentesting techniques, how to protect yourself, and how to create automated programs to find the admin console, SQL injection, and XSS attacks.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Summary

In this chapter, we learned about the importance of a web server signature, and that obtaining the server signature is the first step in hacking.

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

– Abraham Lincoln

The same thing applies in our case. Before the start of an attack on a web server, it is better to check exactly which services are running on it. This is done by foot printing the web server. Error-handling techniques are a passive process. Header checking and banner grabbing are active processes to gather information about the web server. In this chapter, we have also learned about the BeautifulSoup parser. Sections such as hyperlinks, tags, and IDs can be obtained from BeautifulSoup. In the last section, we covered some guidelines for hardening a web server. If you follow those guidelines, you can...