When it comes to creating powerful and effec tive hacking tools, Python is the language of

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T H E   N E T W O R K :   B A S I C S

The network is and always will be the sexi-

est arena for a hacker. An attacker can do 

almost anything with simple network access, 

such as scan for hosts, inject packets, sniff data, 

and remotely exploit hosts. But if you’ve worked your 

way into the deepest depths of an enterprise target, 

you may find yourself in a bit of a conundrum: you 

have no tools to execute network attacks. No netcat. 

No Wireshark. No compiler, and no means to install 

one. However, you might be surprised to find that 

in many cases, you’ll have a Python install. So that’s 

where we’ll begin.

Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

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Chapter 2

This chapter will give you some basics on Python networking using the 

socket

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 module. Along the way, we’ll build clients, servers, and a TCP proxy. 

We’ll then turn them into our very own netcat, complete with a command 

shell. This chapter is the foundation for subsequent chapters, in which we’ll 

build a host discovery tool, implement cross-platform sniffers, and create a 

remote trojan framework. Let’s get started.