Python for secret agents : analyze, encrypt, and uncover intelligence data using python, the essential tool for all aspiring secret agents / Steven F. Lott ; cover image by Jarek Blaminsky.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed September 4, 2014).

Cover; Copyright; Credits; About the Author; About the Reviewers; www.PacktPub.com; Table of Contents; Preface; Chapter 1: Our Espionage Toolkit; Getting the tools of the trade -- Python 3.3; Windows secrets; Mac OS X secrets; Getting more tools -- a text editor; Getting other developer tools; Getting a tool to get more Python components; Confirming our tools; How do we stop?; Using the help() system; Mac OS and GNU/Linux secrets; Windows secrets; Using the help mode; Background briefing -- math and numbers; The usual culprits; The ivory tower of numbers; Integer numbers; Rational numbers.

Floating-point numbersDecimal numbers; Complex numbers; Outside the numbers; Assigning values to variables; Writing scripts and seeing output; Gathering user input; Handling exceptions; Looping and trying again; Handling text and strings; Converting between numbers and strings; Parsing strings; Organizing our software; Working with files and folders; Creating a file; Reading a file; Defining more complex logical conditions; Solving problems -- recovering a lost password; Reading a word corpus; Reading a ZIP archive; Using brute-force search; Summary; Chapter 2: Acquiring Intelligence Data.

Accessing data from the InternetBackground briefing -- the TCP/IP protocols; Using http.client for HTTP GET; Changing our client information; Using FTP in Python; Downloading a file via FTP; Using our FTP get() function; Using urllib for HTTP, FTP, or file access; Using urllib for FTP access; Using a REST API in Python; Getting simple REST data; Using more complex RESTful queries; Saving our data via JSON; Organizing collections of data; Using a Python list; Using list index operations; Using a Python tuple; Using generator expressions with list-of-tuples; Using a Python dictionary mapping.

Using the dictionary access methodsTransforming sequences with generator functions; Using the defaultdict and counter mappings; Using a Python set; Using the for statement with a collection; Using Python operators on collections; Solving problems -- currency conversion rates; Summary; Chapter 3: Encoding Secret Messages with Steganography; Background briefing -- handling file formats; Working with the OS filesystem; glob; os; Processing simple text files; Working with ZIP files; Working with JSON files; Working with CSV files; JPEG and PNG graphics -- pixels and metadata.

Using the Pillow libraryAdding the required supporting libraries; GNU/Linux secrets; Mac OS X secrets; Windows secrets; Installing and confirming Pillow; Decoding and encoding image data; Manipulating images -- resizing and thumbnails; Manipulating images -- cropping; Manipulating images -- enhancing; Manipulating images -- filtering; Manipulating images -- ImageOps; Some approaches to steganography; Getting the red-channel data; Extracting bytes from Unicode characters; Manipulating bits and bytes; Assembling the bits; Encoding the message; Decoding a message; Detecting and preventing tampering.

If you are a Python beginner who is looking to learn the language through interesting projects, this book is for you. A basic knowledge of programming and statistics is beneficial to get the most out of the book.

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