Python programming for Security professionals

Course Code: 1251

$2795

Python programming for Security professionals

Learn to use Python functionality for security-related tasks

Course Code : 1251

$2795

Overview
Schedule classes
What you'll learn
Outline
Prerequisites
Who should attend

Overview

The Python programming for security professionals is a course targeted towards experienced security professionals introducing participants to beginner level concepts such as writing and running Python scripts to advanced level features such as file operations, regular expressions and binary data. The course involves hands-on exercises as well as engaging lectures to ensure participants get a thorough understanding of the concepts learnt in the course. The course enables participants to be able to use Python functionality for security-related tasks like log manipulation and forensics. The course also explores secure coding practices to perform security reviews and auditing Python applications.

Schedule Classes

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Course Delivery

This course is available in the following formats:

Live Classroom
Duration: 4 days

Live Virtual Classroom
Duration: 4 days

What You'll learn

Create working Python scripts following best practices
Use Python data types appropriately
Read and write files with both text and binary data
Search and replace text with regular expressions
Get familiar with the standard library and its work-saving modules
Use lesser-known but powerful Python data types
Create ‘real-world’, professional Python applications
Work with dates, times and calendars
Learn to use collections like lists, dictionaries and sets
Understand Pythonic features like comprehensions and iterators
Write robust code using exception handling
Working with RESTful services

Outline

Module 1: An overview of Python

What is Python?
An overview of Python
What is Python
The Python timeline
Advantages and disadvantages of Python
Getting help with pydoc

Module 2: The Python environment

Starting Python
Using the interpreter
Running a Python script
Python scripts on Unimax/Windows
Editors and IDEs

Module 3: Getting started

Using variables
Built-in functions
Strings
Numbers
Converting among types
Writing to the screen
Command line parameters

Module 4: Flow control

About flow control
White space
Conditional expressions
Relational and Boolean operators
While loops
Alternate loop exits

Module 5: Sequences

About sequences
Lists and list methods
Tuples
Indexing and slicing
Iterating through a sequence
Sequence functions, keywords and operators
List comprehensions
Generator expressions
Nested sequences

Module 6: Working with files

File overview
Opening a text file
Reading a text file
Writing to a text file
Reading and writing raw (binary) data
Converting binary data with struct

Module 7: Dictionaries and sets

About dictionaries
Creating dictionaries
Iterating through a dictionary
About sets
Creating sets
Working with sets

Module 8: Functions

Defining functions
Parameters
Global and local scope
Nested functions
Returning values

Module 9: Sorting

The sorted() function
Alternate keys
Lambda functions
Sorting collections

Module 10: Errors and exception handling

Syntax errors
Exceptions
Using try/catch/else/finally
Handling multiple exceptions
Ignoring exceptions

Module 11: Modules and packages

The import statement
Module search path
Creating modules and using packages
Function and module aliases

Module 12: Classes

About OO programming
Defining classes
Constructors
Methods
Instance data
Properties
Class methods and data

Module 13: Regular expressions

RE syntax overview
RE objects
Searching and matching
Compilation flags
Groups and special groups
Replacing text
Splitting strings

Module 14: The standard library

The sys module
Launching external programs
Math functions
Random numbers
The string module
Reading CSV data

Module 15: Dates and times

Working with dates and times
Translating timestamps
Parsing dates from text
Formatting dates
Calendar data

Module 16: Working with the file system

Paths, directories and file names
Checking for existence
Permissions and other file attributes
Walking directory trees
Creating filters with fileinput
Security and file access

Module 17: Network services

Grabbing web content
Detecting malformed input

Module 18: Writing secure Python applications

Parsing command line options
Getting help with pydoc
Safely handling untrusted data
Managing eval() permissions
Potential insecure packages
Embedding code snippets in Python
Embedding authentication data n Python
Potentially dangerous operations –
- File access
- Operating system access
- Calls to external services
- Called to external data sources
Static analysis tools such as Bandit

Module 19: Log file analysis

Raw log file manipulation
Fail2Ban
Customizing Fail2Ban with Python

Module 20: Security filters

SQL injection detection
Modsecurity CRS filtering

Module 21: Packet analysis

Packet sniffing in Python

Module 22: Analytics

Security logging and analytics
Attack detection and defense
Python and Spark high-level overview

Prerequisites

Participants need to have basic programming experience as well as basic development experience in any programming language. Along with this, participants also need to have working, user-level knowledge of Unix/Linux, Mac or Windows.