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.

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Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
1
Section 1: The Nuts and Bolts of Ethical Hacking – The Basics
Section 1: The Nuts and Bolts of Ethical Hacking – The Basics
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: Introduction to Hacking
Chapter 1: Introduction to Hacking
What's all the fuss about hackers?
What is hacking?
Becoming a successful hacker
Types of hackers
Hacking phases and methodology
Careers in cybersecurity
Types of attacks
Summary
3
Chapter 2: Getting Started – Setting Up a Lab Environment
Chapter 2: Getting Started – Setting Up a Lab Environment
Technical requirements
Setting up VirtualBox
Installing virtual OSes
Installing Python
Integrated development environment
Setting up networking
Updating Kali
Using virtual environments
Summary
4
Section 2: Thinking Like a Hacker – Network Information Gathering and Attacks
Section 2: Thinking Like a Hacker – Network Information Gathering and Attacks
5
Chapter 3: Reconnaissance and Information Gathering
Chapter 3: Reconnaissance and Information Gathering
What is a computer network?
Components of a basic computer network
Classifying network
Network stack
Network entities
Protection
Changing our MAC address
Summary
6
Chapter 4: Network Scanning
Chapter 4: Network Scanning
Introduction to networking
Introduction to Scapy
Network scanner using Scapy
Summary
7
Chapter 5: Man in the Middle Attacks
Chapter 5: Man in the Middle Attacks
Why do we need ARP?
Building an ARP spoof program
Monitoring traffic
Encrypted traffic
Restoring ARP tables manually
Decrypting the network traffic
Summary
8
Section 3: Malware Development
Section 3: Malware Development
9
Chapter 6: Malware Development
Chapter 6: Malware Development
Understanding RATs
Socket programming in Python
Creating malware
Running commands remotely on the victim's machine
Navigating directories
Summary
10
Chapter 7: Advanced Malware
Chapter 7: Advanced Malware
Building a keylogger file transfer
Taking screenshots
Keylogger
Summary
11
Chapter 8: Post Exploitation
Chapter 8: Post Exploitation
Packaging the malware
Understanding trojans
Attack over a public IP
Cracking passwords
Stealing passwords
Creating botnets
Summary
12
Chapter 9: System Protection and Perseverance
Chapter 9: System Protection and Perseverance
Persistence system protection
Bypassing an IDS
Persistence
Summary
Why subscribe?
13
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Decrypting the network traffic

As we saw in the previous section, we can intercept traffic using a man in the middle attack. However, this attack is rarely useful on its own since all the browser traffic nowadays is encrypted, so even if you were able to intercept traffic, you won't be able to do much. You can bypass this procedure by using SSL stripping. Intercepting traffic without encryption is also sometimes useful when you want to monitor a user's activity. This can help you figure out which websites a user is visiting the most. Using this information alongside social engineering attacks can help you compromise the victim's machine.

HTTPS versus HTTP

To understand how SSL stripping works, we need to understand how the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and HTTPS protocols work. HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP, as indicated by the S at the end of its name. It was developed in the early days of the internet, when information was sent in the form of human...

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