Black Hat Python

Preface

Python hacker. Those are two words you really could use to describe me. At
Immunity, I am lucky enough to work with people who actually, really, know
how to code Python. I am not one of those people. I spend a great deal of my
time penetration testing, and that requires rapid Python tool development, with a
focus on execution and delivering results (not necessarily on prettiness,
optimization, or even stability). Throughout this book you will learn that this is
how I code, but I also feel as though it is part of what makes me a strong
pentester. I hope that this philosophy and style helps you as well.
As you progress through the book, you will also realize that I don’t take deep
dives on any single topic. This is by design. I want to give you the bare
minimum, with a little flavor, so that you have some foundational knowledge.
With that in mind, I’ve sprinkled ideas and homework assignments throughout
the book to kickstart you in your own direction. I encourage you to explore these
ideas, and I would love to hear back any of your own implementations, tooling,
or homework assignments that you have done.
As with any technical book, readers at different skill levels with Python (or
information security in general) will experience this book differently. Some of
you may simply grab it and nab chapters that are pertinent to a consulting gig
you are on, while others may read it cover to cover. I would recommend that if
you are a novice to intermediate Python programmer that you start at the
beginning of the book and read it straight through in order. You will pick up
some good building blocks along the way.
To start, I lay down some networking fundamentals in Chapter 2 and slowly
work our way through raw sockets in Chapter 3 and using Scapy in Chapter 4 for
some more interesting network tooling. The next section of the book deals with
hacking web applications, starting with your own custom tooling in Chapter 5
and then extending the popular Burp Suite in Chapter 6. From there we will
spend a great deal of time talking about trojans, starting with GitHub command
and control in Chapter 7, all the way through Chapter 10 where we will cover
some Windows privilege escalation tricks. The final chapter is about using
Volatility for automating some offensive memory forensics techniques.
I try to keep the code samples short and to the point, and the same goes for the
explanations. If you are relatively new to Python I encourage you to punch out
every line to get that coding muscle memory going. All of the source code examples from this book are available at http://nostarch.com/blackhatpython/.
Here we go!