Book Image

Python Ethical Hacking from Scratch

By : Fahad Ali Sarwar
Book Image

Python Ethical Hacking from Scratch

By: Fahad Ali Sarwar

Overview of this book

Penetration testing enables you to evaluate the security or strength of a computer system, network, or web application that an attacker can exploit. With this book, you'll understand why Python is one of the fastest-growing programming languages for penetration testing. You'll find out how to harness the power of Python and pentesting to enhance your system security. Developers working with Python will be able to put their knowledge and experience to work with this practical guide. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, this book takes a hands-on approach to help you build your own pentesting tools for testing the security level of systems and networks. You'll learn how to develop your own ethical hacking tools using Python and explore hacking techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in networks and systems. Finally, you'll be able to get remote access to target systems and networks using the tools you develop and modify as per your own requirements. By the end of this ethical hacking book, you'll have developed the skills needed for building cybersecurity tools and learned how to secure your systems by thinking like a hacker.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Nuts and Bolts of Ethical Hacking – The Basics
4
Section 2: Thinking Like a Hacker – Network Information Gathering and Attacks
8
Section 3: Malware Development

Introduction to networking

In Chapter 3, Reconnaissance and Information Gathering, we learned about the basics of networking from a very high perspective. We learned about the different components and devices present in a network and what the role of each component is. In this section, we will learn a bit more about the actual packets and data that are delivered over a network.

Data representation in digital systems

Let's first understand how your computer system manages to transmit data over a network. Every part of data in a computer system is defined by binary logic levels. These levels are defined as low or high. Every image, file, video, voice recording, or anything else that is stored in a modern-day computing system is represented by these logic levels. In physical hardware, these levels are mapped to either voltage levels or switch statuses. For example, a voltage of 5 V in a digital system might represent high logic and a voltage of 0 V will represent low logic...