Introduction to Python

This course teaches essential Python skills for automating tasks in Information Security, crucial for scaling efforts and bolstering defense strategies.

One of the most pressing needs Information Security professionals face today is the need to automate their work in both the attack, and defense context. Skills gained for automating tasks in programming languages are critical to scale up the efforts of a limited security professional talent pool.

For example, it is not uncommon to find useful Python scripts on the Internet that are at a Proof-of-Concept stage to quickly achieve some information security professional goal. Penetration testers, incident responders, forensics, and defense professionals need the ability to be able to take existing code and produce stable functional Python tools or be able to debug an issue with an existing tool.

This course aims to teach the fundamentals of the Python programming language such that a student will gain a beginning to intermediate level of competency with the language. Labs will be presented in a Capture the Flag (CTF) style format as well as some more comprehensive programming tasks.

The expectation as to whether students can complete all exercises is dependent on prior student experience, and knowledge. Python is a language that is best approached if a student has some elementary programming background (such as shell scripting for example).