Introduction To Python Programming For Security Analysts & Professionals

Course Overview

Module 1:  An Overview of Python

• What is python?
• 1 -- An overview of Python
• What is python?
• Python Timeline
• Advantages/Disadvantages of Python
• Getting help with pydoc

Module 2:  The Python Environment

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

Module 3:  Getting Started

• Using variables
• Builtin 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 o-o 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
• The string module
• Reading CSV data

Module 15:  Dates and times

• Working with dates and times
• Translating timestamps
• Parsing dates from text

Module 16: Working with the file system

• Paths, directories, and filenames
• 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 in 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: Essential, Safe DB Access

• DB-API
• ORM with SQLAlchemy
• Preventing SQL Injection in DB Access
• Parameterization in DB Interactions

 Module 20: Log File Analysis

• Raw log file manipulation
• Fail2Ban
• Customizing Fail2Ban with Python

Module 21: Security FIlters

• SQL-Injection Detection
• ModSecurity CRS filtering

Module 22: Packet Analysis

• Packet Sniffing in Python

Module 23: Analytics

• Security Logging and Analytics
• Attack Detection and Defense
• Python and Spark High-Level Overview

Labs Outline

Skills-Focused, Hands-On Learning: This course is about 50% hands-on lab to 50% lecture ratio, combining engaging instructor presentation, demos and practical group discussions with lab intensive, machine-based student exercises. Throughout the course students will learn to write essential Python scripts using the latest technical skills and best practices. Our Python courses include a wide range of complementary materials and labs to ensure all students are appropriately challenged – no matter their incoming skill level. 

 

Prerequisites

Students are required to have some basic programming experience and exposure prior to attending this course. Students should have basic development experience in any programming language, along with a working, user-level knowledge of Unix/Linux, Mac, or Windows.