Best projects to learn scripting

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Hi,

First thing first, some background.
I work in infosec and efraud handling as an analyst and I have hardly done any coding for around 13 years. I miss making my own tools, especially when it comes to analyzing unstructured data. I used to script some basic parsing tools in python/bash but now I work mostly on boring infrastructure projects, incident handling and such (moving up in the world, yay?) - alas, these things require nothing but forensics and technical know-how. I want to code again, so I need to take matters in my own hands (spare-time).

I hate taking web-courses and such. I need a project of sorts that motivates me to learn scripting - preferably Python, but I am open to suggestions. What kind of projects would you recommend?

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I just found this on the forums: The Noobs of Python: Exercise 1
I am going to read up on it to see if there is something I can use. Tried searching the forum before posting - but obviously did not do a good enough job.

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I’ve heard good things for the following book : https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

I’ve not gone through it myself though, but from description of the chapters, it looks promising

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I’m still Uber-noob with python but i have learned a lot through python series and through some online tutorials. Didn’t have time recently but if you like it i can make few more basic exercises.

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Bash automation. Honestly the best way to start.

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learning to automate setting up your desktop after a Windows reinstall is a good way to learn command prompt / powershell if you use Windows a lot

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Thanks Pobs, but I wouldn’t want you to make exercises when you are better off just doing more Python to learn better yourself. But mostly because I don’t want you to use up a lot of time on this, I was thinking primarily about readily available content. :slight_smile:

What Python series are you referring to?

Thanks man. I just took a look at the content, it is updated in June and its only about 12 USD.
How is the book compared to the udemy video-course? I do not have any experience with udemy, is it good? Udemy has been updated in June 2017 but the book is from May 2015.

Hey man.

Yes, automating a lot of tedious tasks on the desktop environment is always good. I have to work in a Windows environment at work, but we also have Linux servers and virtual Linux machines in order to use API’s - though using Python, this is still possible under Windows, but in an Enterprise this is harder than it sounds (Managed Windows PC’s constantly reboots etc because of updates - but to be honest, that is my fault. I had to make it so because people never reboots and thus never gets the security updates)

What do you automate using powershell? I use powershell to manage ADFS and do some work in Exchange. But not on my desktop at work (Plus, I have blocked it on all work-computers due to ransomware use it as a dropper. Especially after the DDE Vulnerability started to get exploited a lot, or “feature” as Microsoft calls it.

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Code the game snake, that was one of the early things we did in my HS computer science class, pretty sure that was done later int he class but should be do able for beginners.

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I can more or less reinstall Windows and then open powershell and run a script and 10min later be ready to work on my projects because I found https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop it is a command line tool for windows that allows you to install things targeted at developers :slight_smile:

scoop is the best command line installer I’ve found for Windows it have multiple lists of available software
the primary bucket which have must fulfill certain requirements: https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop/tree/master/bucket
useful software that doesn’t fulfill the requirements: https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop-extras

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There’s a Google YouTube class the goes through python with links to the files they’re using. This was like a year ago when I saw it but I wouldn’t doubt it’s still there

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Pick the stuff in your day that you repeat. Automate it. Iterate on it through versioning software.

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Good tip, @mutation666. I will give that one a try once I feel I got the hang of Python again :slight_smile:

Pretty cool tools, @Naelith. I will give them a look. Can’t use untrusted tools like that in my work environment, plus powershell is disabled - But I will give it a spin in a VM and maybe install it on my PC at home :wink:

Nice info, @cemotyz09 - I was not aware of this resource :hugs:

Automating is always nice, @dot404 - I am sure I can automate a lot of stuff at work, the only problem I do not have the time to save time - Ironic, is it not? :stuck_out_tongue: But yes, personal-automation is some of the reason I wanted to get into coding again.