Python Tools : Penetration Testers Arsenal

If you are involved in vulnerability research, reverse engineering or penetration testing, I suggest to try out the Python programming language. It has a rich set of useful libraries and programs. This page lists some of them.

Most of the listed tools are written in Python, others are just Python bindings for existing C libraries, i.e. they make those libraries easily usable from Python programs.

Network

Scapy, Scapy3k: Send, sniff and dissect and forge network packets. Usable interactively or as a library

pypcap, Pcapy and pylibpcap: Several different Python bindings for libpcap

libdnet: Low-level networking routines, including interface lookup and Ethernet frame transmission

dpkt: Fast, simple packet creation/parsing, with definitions for the basic TCP/IP protocols

Impacket: Craft and decode network packets. Includes support for higher-level protocols such as NMB and SMB

pynids: Libnids wrapper offering sniffing, IP defragmentation, TCP stream reassembly and port scan detection

Dirtbags py-pcap: Read pcap files without libpcap

flowgrep: Grep through packet payloads using regular expressions

Knock Subdomain Scan: Enumerate subdomains on a target domain through a wordlist

SubBrute: Fast subdomain enumeration tool

Mallory: Extensible TCP/UDP man-in-the-middle proxy, supports modifying non-standard protocols on the fly

Pytbull: Flexible IDS/IPS testing framework (shipped with more than 300 tests)

Debugging and Reverse Engineering

Paimei: Reverse engineering framework, includes PyDBG, PIDA, pGRAPH

Immunity Debugger: Scriptable GUI and command line debugger

mona.py: PyCommand for Immunity Debugger that replaces and improves on pvefindaddr

IDAPython: IDA Pro plugin that integrates the Python programming language, allowing scripts to run in IDA Pro

PyEMU: Fully scriptable IA-32 emulator, useful for malware analysis

pefile: Read and work with Portable Executable (aka PE) files

pydasm: Python interface to the libdasm x86 disassembling library

PyDbgEng: Python wrapper for the Microsoft Windows Debugging Engine

uhooker: Intercept calls to API calls inside DLLs, and also arbitrary addresses within the executable file in memory

diStorm: Disassembler library for AMD64, licensed under the BSD license

python-ptrace: Debugger using ptrace (Linux, BSD and Darwin system call to trace processes) written in Python

vdb / vtrace: Vtrace is a cross-platform process debugging API implemented in python, and vdb is a debugger which uses it

Androguard: Reverse engineering and analysis of Android applications

Capstone: Lightweight multi-platform, multi-architecture disassembly framework with Python bindings

PyBFD: Python interface to the GNU Binary File Descriptor (BFD) library

Fuzzing

Sulley: Fuzzer development and fuzz testing framework consisting of multiple extensible components

Peach Fuzzing Platform: Extensible fuzzing framework for generation and mutation based fuzzing (v2 was written in Python)

antiparser: Fuzz testing and fault injection API

TAOF: The Art of Fuzzing) including ProxyFuzz, a man-in-the-middle non-deterministic network fuzzer

untidy: General purpose XML fuzzer

Powerfuzzer: Highly automated and fully customizable web fuzzer (HTTP protocol based application fuzzer)

SMUDGE : Pure Python network protocol fuzzer

Mistress: Probe file formats on the fly and protocols with malformed data, based on pre-defined patterns

Fuzzbox: Multi-codec media fuzzer

Forensic Fuzzing Tools: Generate fuzzed files, fuzzed file systems, and file systems containing fuzzed files in order to test the robustness of forensics tools and examination systems

Windows IPC Fuzzing Tools: Tools used to fuzz applications that use Windows Interprocess Communication mechanisms

WSBang: Perform automated security testing of SOAP based web services

Construct: Library for parsing and building of data structures (binary or textual). Define your data structures in a declarative manner

fuzzer.py (feliam): Simple fuzzer by Felipe Andres Manzano

Fusil: Python library used to write fuzzing programs

Web

Requests: Elegant and simple HTTP library, built for human beings

HTTPie: Human-friendly cURL-like command line HTTP client

ProxMon: Processes proxy logs and reports discovered issues

WSMap: Find web service endpoints and discovery files

Twill: Browse the Web from a command-line interface. Supports automated Web testing

Ghost.py: Webkit web client written in Python

Windmill: Web testing tool designed to let you painlessly automate and debug your web application

FunkLoad: Functional and load web tester

spynner: Programmatic web browsing module for Python with Javascript/AJAX support

python-spidermonkey: Bridge to the Mozilla SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine; allows for the evaluation and calling of Javascript scripts and functions

mitmproxy: SSL-Capable, intercepting HTTP proxy. Console interface allows traffic flows to be inspected and edited on the fly

pathod / pathoc: Pathological daemon/client for tormenting HTTP clients and servers

Forensics

Volatility: Extract digital artifacts from volatile memory (RAM) samples

Rekall: Memory analysis framework developed by Google

LibForensics: Library for developing digital forensics applications

TrIDLib: Identify file types from their binary signatures. Now includes Python binding

aft: Android forensic toolkit

Malware Analysis

pyew: Command line hexadecimal editor and disassembler, mainly to analyze malware

Exefilter: Filter file formats in e-mails, web pages or files. Detects many common file formats and can remove active content

pyClamAV: Add virus detection capabilities to your Python software

jsunpack-n: Generic JavaScript unpacker: emulates browser functionality to detect exploits that target browser and browser plug-in vulnerabilities

yara-python: Identify and classify malware samples

phoneyc: Pure Python honeyclient implementation

CapTipper: Aanalyse, explore and revive HTTP malicious traffic from PCAP file

PDF

peepdf: Python tool to analyse and explore PDF files to find out if they can be harmful

Didier Stevens' PDF tools: Analyse, identify and create PDF files (includes PDFiD, pdf-parser and make-pdf and mPDF)

Opaf: Open PDF Analysis Framework. Converts PDF to an XML tree that can be analyzed and modified.

Origapy: Python wrapper for the Origami Ruby module which sanitizes PDF files

pyPDF2: Pure Python PDF toolkit: extract info, spilt, merge, crop, encrypt, decrypt...

PDFMiner: Extract text from PDF files

python-poppler-qt4: Python binding for the Poppler PDF library, including Qt4 support

Misc

InlineEgg: Toolbox of classes for writing small assembly programs in Python

Exomind: Framework for building decorated graphs and developing open-source intelligence modules and ideas, centered on social network services, search engines and instant messaging

RevHosts: Enumerate virtual hosts for a given IP address

simplejson: JSON encoder/decoder, e.g. to use Google's AJAX API

PyMangle: Command line tool and a python library used to create word lists for use with other penetration testing tools

Hachoir: View and edit a binary stream field by field

py-mangle: Command line tool and a python library used to create word lists for use with other penetration testing tools

Other Useful Libraries And Tools

IPython: Enhanced interactive Python shell with many features for object introspection, system shell access, and its own special command system

Beautiful Soup: HTML parser optimized for screen-scraping

matplotlib: Make 2D plots of arrays

Mayavi: 3D Scientific data visualization and plotting

RTGraph3D: Create dynamic graphs in 3D

Twisted: Event-driven networking engine

Suds: Lightweight SOAP client for consuming Web Services

M2Crypto: Most complete OpenSSL wrapper

NetworkX: Graph library (edges, nodes)

Pandas: Library providing high-performance, easy-to-use data structures and data analysis tools

pyparsing: General parsing module

lxml: Most feature-rich and easy-to-use library for working with XML and HTML in the Python language

Whoosh: Fast, featureful full-text indexing and searching library implemented in pure Python

Pexpect: Control and automate other programs, similar to Don Libes `Expect` system

Sikuli: Visual technology to search and automate GUIs using screenshots. Scriptable in Jython

PyQt and PySide: Python bindings for the Qt application framework and GUI library

Books

Violent Python by TJ O'Connor. A Cookbook for Hackers, Forensic Analysts, Penetration Testers and Security Engineers

Grey Hat Python by Justin Seitz: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers.

Black Hat Python by Justin Seitz: Python Programming for Hackers and Pentesters

Python Penetration Testing Essentials by Mohit: Employ the power of Python to get the best out of pentesting

Python for Secret Agents by Steven F. Lott. Analyze, encrypt, and uncover intelligence data using Python

More Stuff

SecurityTube Python Scripting Expert (SPSE) is an online course and certification offered by Vivek Ramachandran.

SANS offers the course SEC573: Python for Penetration Testers.

The Python Arsenal for Reverse Engineering is a large collection of tools related to reverse engineering.

There is a SANS paper about Python libraries helpful for forensic analysis (PDF).

For more Python libaries, please have a look at PyPI, the Python Package Index.

Source: GitHub