First-Ever Pluralsight Live

Join me and all your other favorite Pluralsight authors at the first-ever Pluralsight Live, September 19th - 21st!

Who?

Authors

  • Simon Allardice

Simon is a well-known, long time author of courses. You might have even already taken some of his iOS courses on Lynda.com. Anything he teaches is pure gold. Not to mention that his voice is as smooth as Sean Connery (I'm not even joking!)

  • Troy Hunt

Security guru and owner and operator of "have i been pwned?"

Also, check out one of his hilariously funny calls with a scammer on Youtube: Scamming the Scammer

  • Scott Allen

Long time Microsoft MVP and owner of OdeToCode. This is your guy for all things Microsoft.

  • John Papa

Google developer expert, author, Microsoft advocate, and Angular nut!

  • Nigel Poulton

I think this guy loves Docker more than his mother! But seriously, this is your guy for all things Docker (he also has a cool voice with his great accent).

  • And many more …

And many more authors: https://www.pluralsight.com/event-details/2017/live-2017-speakers

Other Speakers

  • Michelle Obama

Former first lady!

  • Joel Spolsky

CEO of stackoverflow.com and author of Joel on Software blog

  • Steve Young

Former 49ers quarterback and inspirational speaker.

Performances

  • X Ambassadors

A live performance from these guys. If you don't know who they are, I guarantee you've heard their songs on the radio before:

Renegades

Unsteady

What?

  • Get the lowdown on the latest trends in technology, what’s on the horizon, and understand where you should be focusing your time moving forward
  • Network with some of the most passionate technologists in the industry (like Pluralsight authors!).
  • Get the latest scoop on the Pluralsight platform and how to best utilize it within your organization.
  • Understand how to create a culture of learning within your organization.

Why?

  • A chance for you to meet and mingle with your favorite Pluralsight authors in-person.
  • Not all technology conferences have to be about how to use a technology. Come to get inspired, learn new ways of doing things, and see how others are doing it.
  • Unbiased speakers. The speakers really have no vested interest in getting you to use one technology or another, they’re simply people who are super passionate about one technology or another and they want you to share that same passion.
  • Meet and mingle with some of your favorite companies sponsoring the event: Microsoft, Adobe, Twitter, Pivotal, Salesforce, DemandWorks, and Stackoverflow.
  • The people attending this conference eat, breath, and live technology (myself included). Come and learn with the best.
  • Did I mention the potential for networking?
  • Did I mention I’m going to be there? ;)

Where?

The Grand America Hotel
555 South Main St.
Salt Lake City, Utah 84111 USA

When?

Sept 19th - Sept 21st 2017


Hoping to see you there (seriously, say hello if you run in to me!)

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Review of Black Hat Python by Justin Seitz

This time, up for review is Black Hat Python by Justin Seitz by Justin Seitz (who also wrote Grey Hat Python.)

TL;DR: » 4 out of 5 stars.

Audience

This is not a beginner book. It assumes a lot of basic knowledge about security, networking, and Python. It’s also not an expert’s book as most of the stuff you can find online (if you know where to look). I’d put this book at somewhere inbetween intermediate and advanced. If you have a general idea of computer security, hacking, pen testing, etc and a little knowledge (but aren’t an expert) in Python, you’ll enjoy this book.

The 4 of the 5 stars

It just so happens that I fit the audience for this book pretty well. I’m by no means a security expert, nor do I work in the field (I wish), but I feel like I have a good handle on it. Likewise, although I know Python and could probably ‘get-by’ programming something in it, I don’t use it often enough to feel super comfortable using it.

The book is kind of a large collection of example scripts that you might use while hacking or pen testing. The Python code is at an intermediate level/advanced level and as I mentioned not being very good at Python, I had to look up several references. (Side Note: there are a few syntax typos in the book but nothing that shouldn’t be easy to fix.)

You might think that a book with a bunch of example code is kind of lame because you can just look it up online, but it turns out to be pretty useful. I think one of the hardest parts of programming is figuring out where to start. With these examples, you can copy the code and build on it from there. For example, I’ve actually always wanted to write a sniffer just to see how they work. The book takes you through writing a very simple sniffer that you could easily build on.

Perhaps what I enjoyed most about the book was that it got me excited about writing my own Python code for security tools. I guess you could say that it sort of motivated me or put me in the mindset to want to try doing it on my own instead of using everyone else’s tools!

The missing star

I didn’t think I’d ever say this about a book but I think my overall complaint is the length. It’s too short and there are several areas where the author could have expanded/explained things. For instance, with the Scapy library that it teaches you how to use, I was confused with how the ARP poisoning worked until I figured out that because the hardware src was not an argument to the ARP() class, it was set by default to the machine’s mac address (key to the arp poisoning). I was also confused with the / notation for composing packets until I read the Scapy docs

It’s kind of funny, the book can be a bit bipolar at times. One chapter you’re reading it thinking that this type of knowledge would be good for pen testing. The next chapter, you’re thinking, wow, this is real “bad guy” (Black Hat) stuff that I could rarely see a use for other than devious purposes. I’m glad to see these chapters because near the first of the book I was thinking to myself, is the ‘Black Hat’ title just a ruse to get you interested in the book, or are we actually going to learn real hacking stuff. I would have been happier if the whole book was this way but who knows, maybe the author and/or publishing company would get sued :-p

Thanks to my favorite publishing company in the world (No Starch Press) for providing the book for review!