Black Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Pentesters

Going to give this book 5 stars because the author does an excellent job of explaining Python in an informal way. Easily taking someone from a beginner level to a more advanced level. However I must add that in Chapter 1, it was nowhere near as easy to set up WingIDE as he explained. Now to be fair I was installing on Kali 2.0, but I downloaded the newest versions as well as the exact versions that were in the book. Still with no success. Yes I also tried the dependency command that was given as well as hours of Linux "dependency" posts. The program looks great so I still try to correct the dependency issue from time to time but initially I just gave up and continued with the book. Do not let this deter you. If you are interested in Python development or learning it for pen-testing purposes, then this book should be on your bookshelf.

Some really, fundamentally good python in this book. It's about really thinking out of the box with python, and as a learning tool, it's fun, as a reference, it's on my shelf. The author knows his OSINT really well, and this is a part of the field, so it is also valuable for those in the field, and those who are curious about the dynamics of network programming, not a "how to commit a felony" book. Sure, an evil guy could make a payload, but really?The book was a great learning tool and a lot of fun in exploring python and security issues in general.

I use this as a supplemental text in both my undergraduate systems programming course and in my advanced graduate class in data security. In the undergraduate class it lets the students practice their python and see some of network programming without getting lost in all the structs and pointers of the C language API. (Python neatly wraps the system calls, then once the students are more comfortable with C we look at those). In the advanced class, seeing how tools like nmap, netcat, and wget can be emulated with a python program is very informative. Especially when we use it to get around software installation restrictions imposed by the i****ts at the university.

Good book filled with tons of useful info. My only issue is that a lot of the code does not work. I've spent a lot of time making tweaks to get these applications to work correctly. That could just be to the way code behaves in diverse environments, but it was pretty frustrating. Prepare to learn a lot, but most of the learning will come from going over and over the code to fix it.

Coming from more of a network and security generalist's background I found this book to be very informative and direct to the point depending on what you are trying to accomplish at what stage of your attack. I did find that you have to follow the precise instructions in chapter 1 - setting up your enviornment, for most of the code to work. Python has changed quite a bit from version 2 and you have to pay attention while attempting to write and use the code. Don't skip chapter 1.What I found very useful was the socket programming and client/server/netcat examples found early on in the book. The examples get more complex quckly after chapter 2 but Justin does a great job at notating the relevant sections and walking the reader through it carefully. Great reference book to keep by your side.

This book provides (among other things) a very complete and easy to follow discussion on packet sniffing in the wild - without the use of other packages. Scapy is a wonderful package, but it can't compare to the knowledge this book offers on TCP/UDP/ICMP. If you're penetrating a network, you must assume you're tool set is limited to the point where you have to write your own netcat!

I have finally read this book - in one sitting - a lot of good information that gives a good sense of how TCP/UDP/SSH etc works. Good examples with tools, the only thing is that this was written for python 2.7 I believe, so I had to google some of the library imports because of name changes

It was kind of okay to understand it's difficult cuz now there's AI systems out there that can generate as easily it's more difficult just to write it out