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Did you ever look at "Violent Python"? Any opinion as an alternative? http://www.amazon.com/Violent-Python-Cookbook-Penetration-Engineers/dp/1597499579 http:

Did you ever look at "Violent Python"? Any opinion as an alternative? http://www.amazon.com/Violent-Python-Cookbook-Penetration-Engineers/dp/1597499579 http://www.amazon.com/Violent-Python-Cookbook-Penetration-En...

meowface 12y ago
I'm not tptacek, but... After lightly reading through both books, I think Gray Hat Python is a great book for more advanced security concepts, especially on the reverse engineering and exploit dev side of things, but isn't a very good book for learning Python or programming. Violent Python on the other hand is a great book for beginners to Python and programming, and it teaches both pretty well, but it only goes into surface level security concepts for the most part. Gray Hat Python is closer to a Windows API/x86 assembly book than a Python one. Violent Python is a real Python book and mostly covers general information security and network security concepts. Gray Hat Python is also purely application security. Debugging, reversing, hooking, writing shellcode, exploiting... Violent Python is almost entirely network security, with one chapter on forensics. Exploit dev vs. exploit user. It depends on your experience level and what you want to actually learn. If someone was brand new to Python, application security, and even programming, I'd recommend reading Violent Python first and then Gray Hat. If someone has more advanced security knowledge and has some decent programming skills already, I'd probably tell them to skip Violent Python. Or if they wanted to focus on appsec vs. netsec, I'd direct them to one or the other based on that. If you want both, you should definitely read both.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Wow, obviously not tptacek; you did way better on that comparison than tptacek could have. :)
- droopybuns 12y ago
  Thanks for your thoughts. I liked violent python- but you've convinced me to check out gray hat based on your commentary.
- dobbsbob 12y ago
  Blackhat Python is out in November http://www.nostarch.com/blackhatpython http://www.nostarch.com/blackhatpython 'Automating offensive forensics' should be an interesting chapter
  - meowface 12y ago
    Looks pretty interesting. I'll probably buy it.

meowface 12y ago

I'm not tptacek, but... After lightly reading through both books, I think Gray Hat Python is a great book for more advanced security concepts, especially on the reverse engineering and exploit dev side of things, but isn't a very good book for learning Python or programming. Violent Python on the other hand is a great book for beginners to Python and programming, and it teaches both pretty well, but it only goes into surface level security concepts for the most part. Gray Hat Python is closer to a Windows API/x86 assembly book than a Python one. Violent Python is a real Python book and mostly covers general information security and network security concepts. Gray Hat Python is also purely application security. Debugging, reversing, hooking, writing shellcode, exploiting... Violent Python is almost entirely network security, with one chapter on forensics. Exploit dev vs. exploit user. It depends on your experience level and what you want to actually learn. If someone was brand new to Python, application security, and even programming, I'd recommend reading Violent Python first and then Gray Hat. If someone has more advanced security knowledge and has some decent programming skills already, I'd probably tell them to skip Violent Python. Or if they wanted to focus on appsec vs. netsec, I'd direct them to one or the other based on that. If you want both, you should definitely read both.

tptacek 12y ago
Wow, obviously not tptacek; you did way better on that comparison than tptacek could have. :)
droopybuns 12y ago
Thanks for your thoughts. I liked violent python- but you've convinced me to check out gray hat based on your commentary.
dobbsbob 12y ago
Blackhat Python is out in November http://www.nostarch.com/blackhatpython http://www.nostarch.com/blackhatpython 'Automating offensive forensics' should be an interesting chapter
- meowface 12y ago
  Looks pretty interesting. I'll probably buy it.