Preface

Python is a dynamic but interpreted language, which comes under high-level programming languages. With its clear syntax and an extensive library, it is used as a general-purpose language. Based on Python's interpreted nature, it's often considered as a scripting language. Python is dominant in information security as it's less complex and possesses limitless libraries and third-party modules. Security experts have preferred Python as a language to develop information security toolkits such as w3af, sqlmap, and many more. Python's modular design, which help to reuse the code and code readability, make Python suites the preferred choice for security researchers and experts to write scripts and build tools for security testing.

Information security tools, including fuzzers, proxies, scanners, and even the exploits has been written with Python. Also, Python is the language for several current open source penetration testing tools from volatility for memory analysis to libPST and for abstracting the process of examining emails. It is the right language to learn for an information security researcher because of the large number of reverse engineering and exploitation libraries available for your use. So, learning Python may help you in difficult situations, where you need to extend or tweak these tools.

In this book, we will deal with how a security researcher could use these tools and libraries to aid his day-to-day work. The following pages will help you learn to detect and exploit various types of vulnerabilities, while enhancing your knowledge on the concepts of wireless applications and information gathering through practical recipes. Read on to explore a pragmatic way to penetration test using Python to build efficient code and save time.