Security and Privacy in a Networked World/Programming in Python

NOTE: This topic makes use of Wikipedia articles to provide the basic understanding of the matters. These articles deal with technology and are not much disputed, having reached the common knowledge stage. They also provide some good links for further study under the reference sections.

Python?

Python is a programming language developed by Guido van Rossum in 1989. It is a full-fledged, generic programming language with many different uses, in networking security it is often used as a tool to write short scripts for managing (and sometimes also, attacking) computer networks. Other reasons for choosing Python as the example language for this course include:

• Python is often deemed as a good choice to start learning programming with, as its syntax is relatively simple.
• Python directs its users towards good programming style by using indenting to mark structural blocks in programs (most other well-known languages - e.g. Java, C or Pascal - allow free placement of program statements and denote blocks with keywords or symbols).
• As fully free and open-source software, it is included by default in most modern Unix-based operating systems (including OS X as well as almost all Linux distributions and BSD Unixes).
• Python is also used to write some system software, e.g. the graphic installers used by Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora.
• It is used for writing scripts in LibreOffice (similar to the role of Visual Basic for Applications used in MS Office), GIMP graphics package and a number of graphics/animation packages like 3D Max, Maya, Lightwave and others.

Note that Python is currently available in two parallel flavours. Python 2 was released in 2000 and its current stable version is 2.7. However, in 2008 the creator of Python decided to fix some inconsistencies in the language, resulting in the new Python 3 being incompatible with Python 2. Most systems that include Python have opted for Python 2 so far - therefore, this version (2.7) is also used at our course.

READ MORE at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_%28programming_language%29

...