Python: System Services and Activity Monitoring

This course is targeted at using Python to monitor system services, including how they respond and how they communicate. It covers acquiring information from a server both locally and remotely, interacting with a MySQL server, interacting with a DNS server, tracking the registered physical locations of IP addresses, monitoring for abnormal process behavior, and monitoring for abnormal process communication (network) behavior. By the end of this material you should have a firm base of understanding of how Python can be used to build security tooling. The running scenario used throughout the course places you as a network security engineer for a fictional company, Globomantics. In this role you are expected to bring new tools and ideas into the security group, including Python-based utilities that can be added to your day-to-day toolkit. Each module below builds on the previous one, moving from simple local information gathering all the way up to live process and network behavior monitoring.

As a Globomantics security engineer you may need to use this information both ways: to maintain the security of your own systems, and to perform authorized penetration tests against them.

The de...