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Python Penetration Testing Essentials
Python Penetration Testing Essentials

Python Penetration Testing Essentials: Employ the power of Python to get the best out of pentesting

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Python Penetration Testing Essentials

Chapter 2. Scanning Pentesting

Network scanning refers to a set of procedures that investigate a live host, the type of host, open ports, and the type of services running on the host. Network scanning is a part of intelligence gathering by virtue of which an attack can create a profile of the target organization.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • How to check live systems
  • Ping sweep
  • TCP scanner
  • How to create an efficient IP scanner
  • Services running on the target machine
  • The Concept of a port scanner
  • How to create an efficient port scanner

You should have basic knowledge of the TCP/IP layer communication. Before proceeding further, the concept of the Protocol Data Unit (PDU) should be clear.

PDU is a unit of data specified in the protocol. It is the generic term for data at each layer.

  • For the application layer, PDU indicates data
  • For the transport layer, PDU indicates a segment
  • For the Internet or the network layer, PDU indicates a packet
  • For the data link layer or network...

How to check live systems in a network and the concept of a live system

Ping scan involves sending an ICMP ECHO Request to a host. If a host is live, it will return an ICMP ECHO Reply, as shown in the following image:

How to check live systems in a network and the concept of a live system

ICMP request and reply

The operating system's ping command provides the facility to check whether the host is live or not. Consider a situation where you have to test a full list of IP addresses. In this situation, if you test the IP one by one, it will take a lot of time and effort. In order to handle this situation, we use ping sweep.

Ping sweep

Ping sweep is used to identify the live host from a range of IP addresses by sending the ICMP ECHO request and the ICMP ECHO reply. From a subnet and network address, an attacker or pentester can calculate the network range. In this section, I am going to demonstrate how to take advantage of the ping facility of an operating system.

First, I shall write a simple and small piece of code, as follows:

import os
response = os.popen(...

What are the services running on the target machine?

Now you are familiar with how to scan the IP address and identify a live host within a subnet. In this section, we will discuss the services that are running on a host. These services are the ones that are using a network connection. The service using a network connection must open a port; from a port number, we can identify which service is running on the target machine. In pentesting, the significance of port scanning is to check whether any illegitimate service is running on the host machine.

Consider a situation where users normally use their computer to download a game, and a Trojan is identified during the installation of the game. The Trojan goes into hidden mode and opens a port and sends all the keystrokes log information to the hacker. In this situation, port scanning helps to identify the unknown services that are running on the victim's computer.

Port numbers range from 0 to 65536.The well-known ports (also known as system...

Summary

Network scanning is done to gather information on the networks, hosts, and services that are running on the hosts. Network scanning is done by the ping command of the OS; ping sweep takes advantage of the ping facility and scans the list of IPs. Sometimes, ping sweep does not work because users might turn off their ICMP ECHO reply feature or use a firewall to block ICMP packets. In this situation, your ping sweep scanner might not work. In such scenarios, we have to take advantage of the TCP three-way handshake; TCP works at the transport layer, so we have to choose the port number on which we want to carry out the TCP connect scan. Some ports of the Windows OS are always open. So you can take advantage of those open ports. The first main section is dedicated to network scanning; when you perform network scanning, your program should have maximum performance and take minimum time. In order to increase performance significantly, multithreading should be used.

After the scanning of...

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Description

If you are a Python programmer or a security researcher who has basic knowledge of Python programming and want to learn about penetration testing with the help of Python, this book is ideal for you. Even if you are new to the field of ethical hacking, this book can help you find the vulnerabilities in your system so that you are ready to tackle any kind of attack or intrusion.

Who is this book for?

If you are a Python programmer or a security researcher who has basic knowledge of Python programming and want to learn about penetration testing with the help of Python, this book is ideal for you. Even if you are new to the field of ethical hacking, this book can help you find the vulnerabilities in your system so that you are ready to tackle any kind of attack or intrusion.

What you will learn

  • Monitor the Ethernet IP and TCP traffic over the network
  • Explore wireless traffic with the help of various programs
  • Perform wireless attacks with Python programs
  • Check live systems and distinguish between the operating system and services of a remote machine
  • Broaden your concepts in pentesting right from the basics of the client/server architecture in Python
  • Gather passive information from a website using automated scripts
  • Perform XSS, SQL injection, and parameter tampering attacks

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jan 28, 2015
Length: 178 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781784398583
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Product Details

Publication date : Jan 28, 2015
Length: 178 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781784398583
Category :
Languages :

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Frequently bought together


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Table of Contents

8 Chapters
1. Python with Penetration Testing and Networking Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Scanning Pentesting Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Sniffing and Penetration Testing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Wireless Pentesting Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Foot Printing of a Web Server and a Web Application Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Client-side and DDoS Attacks Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Pentesting of SQLI and XSS Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Top Reviews
Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
(9 Ratings)
5 star 11.1%
4 star 33.3%
3 star 22.2%
2 star 11.1%
1 star 22.2%
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Kindle Customer Mar 25, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Although the subject of security is not my area of expertise I bought this book with the idea of grasping the principles of systems / networks penetration in order to become more familiar with the tools used for such purposes.This is the kind of book that not only teaches you something new but does it in a refreshing way. I made me wonder: why would anyone rewrite some well known script in bash (or even a bat file for that matter) in Python ? because we can ! I can hear a lot of voices saying it outloud. But what if I told you that you can rewrite complete tools to sniff a network ? or how about using sockets directly from the command line ? If you ever wondered that too, well this is the book for us.Below you can see an image of my (Enthought Canopy) command line trying to get through the office's Proxy Server using one of the book's scripts.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
perceive Mar 15, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
We have another Python book, this time dedicated to Penetration Testing.The book itself is as much as use case scenario for using Python as a guide to Pen Testing, so if you are expecting a pen testing education I'd suggest more than this book here.However, if what you are after is how to use Python with real world examples this book may suit your needs. The provided code examples (you can download the code as well from Packt) are all very helpful in understanding where Python can be used in this field.If you have some experience in Pen testing already, the code will be more useful than nearly anything else.The main reason that I reduced the mark to 4 stars was that the books examples are all Python 2, not 3. For a book published in 2015 I'd like to know that the future proofing of my learning was in place. While there is an abundance of Python 2 code out there and it will not be going away anytime soon, the general python community is showing signs that the schism between 2 and 3 are reducing with more and more python 3 code being written. This is a minor issue for me, as most OS that I use will be maintaining support for both as far as I can see into the future.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Tim Crothers Mar 16, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Solid introduction to using Python for Pentesting applications. The book doesn't go into an extreme amount of depth but then this is an "essentials" book. Topic was covered logically and the included sample code makes for a good baseline for crafting your own penetration related tools in Python. The book could use some more editing to clean up errors but they were all minor in nature so I only dinged one star as a result. Overall very good starting place if you wish to learn to craft some of your own tools for doing pentesting in Python. Well worth the purchase price.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Finn M Glas Jan 14, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Good but long read that tought me a lot
Amazon Verified review Amazon
WagesOfSin Jul 08, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
Its a pretty good book, I'm half way through and using it to prep me for other Python Pentest books which delve into the topic deeply. I thought a good strategy would be to use this lighter book as an intro for deeper books such as Violent Python. My biggest concern though is the editing! I have have to correct lines in the code which had typos all through out the book.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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