Mark Baggett

All security professionals, including Penetration Testers, Forensics Analysts, Network Defenders, Security Administrators, and Incident Responders, have one thing in common. CHANGE. Change is constant. Technology, threats, and tools are constantly evolving. If we don't evolve with them, we'll become ineffective and irrelevant, unable to provide the vital defenses our organizations increasingly require.

Maybe your chosen Operating Systems has a new feature that creates interesting… Show more

All security professionals, including Penetration Testers, Forensics Analysts, Network Defenders, Security Administrators, and Incident Responders, have one thing in common. CHANGE. Change is constant. Technology, threats, and tools are constantly evolving. If we don't evolve with them, we'll become ineffective and irrelevant, unable to provide the vital defenses our organizations increasingly require.

Maybe your chosen Operating Systems has a new feature that creates interesting forensics artifacts that would be invaluable for your investigation, if only you had a tool to access it. Often for new features and forensics artifacts, no such tool has yet been released. You could try moving your case forward without that evidence or hope that someone creates a tool before the case goes cold...or you can write a tool yourself.

Or, perhaps an attacker bypassed your defenses and owned your network months ago. If existing tools were able to find the attack, you wouldn't be in this situation. You are bleeding sensitive data and the time-consuming manual process of finding and eradicating the attacker is costing you money and hurting your organization big time. The answer is simple if you have the skills: Write a tool to automate your defenses.

Or, as a Penetration tester, you need to evolve as quickly as the threats you are paid to emulate. What do you do when "off-the-shelf" tools and exploits fall short? If you're good, you write your own tool.

Writing a tool is easier said than done, right? Not really. Python is a simple, user-friendly language that is designed to make automating tasks that security professionals perform quick and easy. Whether you are new to coding or have been coding for years, SANS SEC573 Automating Information Security with Python will have you creating programs to make your job easier and make you more efficient. Show less

Violent Python shows you how to move from a theoretical understanding of offensive computing concepts to a practical implementation. Instead of relying on another attacker’s tools, this book will teach you to forge your own weapons using the Python programming language. The examples in this book will teach you how to master writing your own Python scripts to simultaneously attack several network services, analyze digital artifacts left by various applications and documents, investigate network… Show more

Violent Python shows you how to move from a theoretical understanding of offensive computing concepts to a practical implementation. Instead of relying on another attacker’s tools, this book will teach you to forge your own weapons using the Python programming language. The examples in this book will teach you how to master writing your own Python scripts to simultaneously attack several network services, analyze digital artifacts left by various applications and documents, investigate network traffic for malicious activity, intercept and attack traffic from wireless devices, data-mine popular social media sites, and create malware to evade antivirus systems. Show less

Today basic scripting skills are essential to professionals in all aspects of information security. Understanding how to develop your own applications means you can automate tasks and do more, with fewer resources, in less time. As penetration testers, knowing how to use canned information security tools is a basic skill that you must have. Knowing how to build your own tools when the tools someone else wrote fail is what separates the great penetration testers from the good. This course is… Show more

Today basic scripting skills are essential to professionals in all aspects of information security. Understanding how to develop your own applications means you can automate tasks and do more, with fewer resources, in less time. As penetration testers, knowing how to use canned information security tools is a basic skill that you must have. Knowing how to build your own tools when the tools someone else wrote fail is what separates the great penetration testers from the good. This course is designed for security professionals who have some basic scripting skills and want to learn how to apply them to the field of penetration testing. The course covers the essential skills that are needed to develop applications that interact with networks, websites, databases, and file systems so you can take your career to the next level. We cover these essential skills as we build practical applications that you can immediately put into use in your penetration tests. Show less