Python Programming & Cybersecurity - Web Attacks/Hacking

Explore the Python and Docker security lab environment, start with Python basics on tablet Linux, access web applications, and review lab resources, people, and files to download.

Explore lab topologies zero, one, and two for web security on a LAMP Hackett auction site and a Django blog, using VMware, Python basics, and Docker containers.

Explore configuring the phi vip lab topology for python web security by adding nodes and the auction server, creating a pool, and linking a virtual server on port 80.

Provision the client and the target web server on Ubuntu Linux, download and unzip lab resources, and verify five directories: slides, Python basics, Python web, Python attacks, and web servers.

Explore Python programming as a language and its role for AI professionals, highlighting its advantages for cybersecurity and related career paths.

Discover why Python is a widely used interpreted scripting language, with a low barrier to entry, easy installation on Linux, Mac, and Windows, and real-world usage from Google to Spotify.

Discover how Python opens doors to careers in machine learning, data science, web and backend development, game creation, and cybersecurity roles such as penetration testing and bug bounty, with automation.

Explore how Python enables cybersecurity professionals to automate reconnaissance, execute attack payloads, and perform web fuzzing with API integration across devices such as the next generation firewall and WAF.

Explore how Python scripting enables web attacks, including injections (cross-site scripting, SQL injection), brute force, and remote code execution, plus automated reconnaissance and tool integration with Burp Suite.

Explore python basics for beginners with a hands-on lab demonstration, covering lists, tuples, dictionaries, and modules. Set up a college Linux environment for the lab.

Explore Python as a versatile language for machine learning, web development, and automation, including cybersecurity applications like attack payloads, and learn why 3.x is the active standard.

Explore executing Python code through the interactive shell and simple scripts, including the shebang and two run options—shell and the Python command—plus built-in helpers like help, url, and type.

Learn strings in Python by declaring string variables and printing their values. Master operations like uppercase, replace, starts with, and split to transform and analyze data.

Explore basic arithmetic in Python: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, with round to control decimal places and checking integer values.

Explore lists, also called arrays, storing items in a variable with square brackets. Access with zero-based indices 0, 1, 2 and count values with length; note lists are mutable.

Explore the difference between lists and tuples in Python, focusing on mutable lists versus immutable tuples. See how lists support item assignment, while tuples do not, with server examples.

Explore dictionaries as key-value stores that use colons and commas to define key-value pairs, enabling retrieval by key rather than index.

Demonstrate Python basics in a Linux terminal by creating variables, concatenating strings, printing results, and preparing a script with a shebang and correct permissions.

Demonstrates Python basics by building a server list, indexing and printing elements, and creating a web dictionary with apache and nginx values, then printing by key and by index.

Explore booleans as binary true or false values and master logical operators such as and, or, and not, along with comparisons and membership tests in strings.

Learn how Python conditional statements use if, elif, and else with indentation and a colon to assign a web server variable and print engine x.

Explore for and while loops in Python, iterating over lists, dictionaries, and strings, using range to handle numeric values, and printing items with concise two-line loops.

Demonstrates basic python syntax with if elif else, loops, and user input, using a web server variable to select Apache, Engine X, or Tomcat, then printing results.

Learn to collect user input in Python 3.x using input and prompts. Show how to store the username and hide the password with get pass while printing results.

Explore Python functions to automate tasks, pass parameters, and return results, with practical examples of def, function calls, and conditional logic for server checks.

Explore Python modules, including built-in and custom modules, learn import syntax, and access platform and OS tools to manage system information and file paths.

Explore a Python basics project that uses a flowchart to drive a script, prompting for yes/y or no/n and advancing to a prototype process configuration.

Builds a Python project in a Linux terminal that validates yes or no input using a y_n function, while loops, and conditional logic to ensure correct prompts.

Ping three destination IPs in the lab range (192.168.254.x) as x goes from 70 to 72, and print success or fail messages for each ping before exiting at 73.

Create a Python script that pings three IPs automatically using a for loop, os.system, and the ping command, prints per-address status, and suppresses extra output.

Explore web technologies basics through a hands-on lab overview, configuring a Linux Apache MySQL development stack and verifying access to a lab auction site from the management network.

Explore how a network interface card, MAC and IP addresses, NAT, and DNS enable LAN and Internet access through routers, firewalls, and web servers via a client-server model.

Explain how http is a tcp-based web protocol on port 80, delivering static, dynamic, and interactive web pages through a client-server model and web browsers.

Demonstrate basics of http by pinging a local auction site, editing hosts file to map a hostname, accessing via ip, then viewing the page source to inspect html and php.

Learn how http connectivity works as a connectionless application over tcp, including the tcp three way handshake, client and web server interaction, http requests and responses, and stateless transactions.

Capture http traffic with tcpdump, study the tcp three-way handshake and push/ack flags, observe client–server exchanges on port 80, and note that full http data needs tools like burp suite.

Explore the lamp web development stack—linux, apache, mysql, php (or perl or python)—and learn how client and server exchange http requests, php connects to the database to generate dynamic html.

Demonstrates verifying a lamp stack on a Debian Linux server by logging in, checking Apache and MySQL, and inspecting PHP files and index pages.

Distinguish http requests from responses, and grasp the start line, headers, and body. Explore common methods, headers, and example payloads from forms and login.

Explore how to inspect http messages with browser developer tools and Burp Suite, analyzing request and response headers, cookies, and status codes to debug web authentication flows.

Explore http basics and status codes within the TCP/IP model, compare OSI layers, and learn common codes such as 200, 302, 404, and 500 that govern web interactions.

Demonstrates how http requests and responses use status codes like 200 and 302 in a login flow, with post and get methods and redirects.

Explore http methods such as get and post, plus put, delete, trace, options, and head, and learn how query strings and form data move between client and server.

Master web forms and input fields, including text areas, text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, and dropdowns, with predefined values, HTML structure, and submission to databases or URLs.

Explore web forms by analyzing a login form and a search form, showing how post and get transmit usernames, passwords, and hidden action parameters through http requests.

Explore web technology basics and test vulnerabilities from the OWASP ten, including broken access control, cryptography failures, and injection, using the same topology and lab environment in hands-on demonstrations.

Explore the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and its top ten vulnerabilities, including broken access control, cryptographic failures, and injection.

Explore parameter tampering within broken access control and insecure direct object references, showing how tampering url parameters or paths can expose accounts, sensitive data, or admin privileges.

Demonstrates how parameter tampering causes a data breach by editing the web app's address parameters and using wildcards, revealing names, emails, and credit card details.

Demonstrates hidden field manipulation in HTML forms, showing how hidden inputs can carry data like price or session IDs, and how testers use Burp Suite to test parameter tampering.

Demonstrates hidden field manipulation in a web auction app by intercepting and altering HTTP request data with Burp Suite, dropping price from 300 to 1 USD to complete a purchase.

Explain forceful browsing as directly accessing admin or sensitive pages not intended for public viewing, and contrast broken access control with parameter tampering and directory traversal.

Showcases forceful browsing to access config.inc.php and backup config files, exposing a db password and enabling unauthenticated access to the admin page and user data.

Identify sensitive data exposure threats across data at rest, in transit, and in the browser. Enforce TLS verification, encrypted traffic, CA validation, and strong key management for data in transit.

Demonstrates how http only sites expose sensitive data and why ssl tls encryption and masking of credit card and social security numbers prevent cryptographic failure vulnerability.

Examine SQL injection, a common web form based attack that injects SQL queries via data plane input, enabling access to databases and possible compromise of the operating system.

Demonstrate sql injection to bypass login by using or one is equal to one, revealing all user data and highlighting a dangerous back-end database vulnerability.

Explore broken authentication and session management, including weak passwords, brute force risks, and theft of session IDs via HTTP headers and logs, enabling unauthorized access and potential identity theft.

Set up a lab web app behind a five big IP virtual server, deploy a Django site on worker three, and validate access via the VIP with a login test.

Revisits python basics with concatenation by plus and f-string, shows join with a separator, and covers functions with fixed and variable arguments, plus adding a key value pair to dictionary.

Demonstrates using Python 3.7.5 on an older Linux system, showing string construction with concatenation and f-strings, and building a web attacks dictionary with keys and SQL injection.

Learn to use the Python http request and Beautiful Soup modules to send get and post requests, perform web scraping, parse HTML, navigate the parse tree, and extract data.

Create and run Python scripts to test an HTTP request to a target web app, parse HTML with BeautifulSoup, and print the response to validate access.

Explore how the find function retrieves html tags and attributes, returning single or multiple results and extracting attribute values such as method from forms.

Demonstrates using the find function to locate registration form inputs, extract the csr middleware token, and reveal the http method post by parsing html with BeautifulSoup.

Automate user registration on a Django-based web app with PostgreSQL by sending HTTP requests, parsing HTML with BeautifulSoup, managing CSRF tokens and cookies, and posting username and password.

Automate web registration by extracting a CSRF token, handling cookies, and posting username and password to the register endpoint; verify sign-in with a Python script using Saul Goodman.

Automates web login using http requests and BeautifulSoup against a Django-based site with PostgreSQL, extracting CSRF tokens and session IDs to persist a login session.

Automate web login using a Python script by handling CSRF tokens, cookies, and session IDs, posting credentials to the login page, and storing the session in memory.

Learn to access files in python with the open function, using write, read, append, and ex modes; store the handle in a variable and use read or write, then close.

Create and open a text file with Python, read and split lines into a list, then search for a name and report whether it is found.

Engage in hands-on Python automation for web applications, testing attack payloads like cross-site scripting and brute force within the same lab topology used previously.

Explore cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities, focusing on stored, reflected, and DOM-based XSS, including blind and self-XSS, with OWASP top ten vulnerabilities and practical lab demonstrations.

Demonstrates cross-site scripting (XSS) on a blog site by registering, posting, and injecting JavaScript, and shows a Python script that automates the attack to steal session authentication.

Demonstrate broken access control by showing how attackers access resources without validation, expanding on parameter tampering and forceful browsing, including manual and Python-automated testing on a simple two-node web server.

Demonstrates broken access control with IDOR by modifying URLs to change other users' passwords, and shows a Python script automating the admin password breach on a Django web app.

Explore brute force attacks that test usernames and passwords to bypass authentication, and review fuzzing and Python automation for evaluating web security.

Demonstrate a brute force attack against a web login by using web fuzzing to verify user existence and a password list to test credentials, resulting in a successful admin login.

Summarize the wrap up by revisiting course scope, lab setup with docker and Linux attacker, Python basics, web technologies, web forms, OWASP vulnerabilities, and web attacks with Python scripts.

Advance from python and web vulnerabilities to web security certifications like f5303 and offensive security credentials such as web assessor and ewpx, with future web and network attack courses.

Celebrate completing the course and invite feedback, five-star ratings, and sharing with friends, while promoting more cloud data center and cybersecurity tutorials on Udemy and stick show.

Finish the course and prepare for the PHI 303 exam offensive security web assessor and web penetration testing. Advance your Python programming and cybersecurity career; connect on LinkedIn.