Python for Secret Agents

About This Book

• Build a toolbox of Python gadgets for password recovery, currency conversion, and civic data hacking


• Use steganography to hide secret messages in images


• Get to grips with geocoding to find villains' secret lairs

Who This Book Is For

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.

What You Will Learn

• Quickly get to grips with using Python to create tools and solve problems
• Manipulate image files and learn how to encode messages into an image using steganography
• Gather a file's hidden secrets, such as EXIF data and ZIP archive contents
• Build applications that access, filter, and analyze live data from the Web
• Design Python modules, libraries, and applications
• Customize your Python environment with specialized packages
• Extract data using HTTP and FTP internetworking protocols

In Detail

Python is an easy-to-learn and extensible programming language that allows secret agents to work with a wide variety of data in a number of ways. It gives beginners a simple way to start programming, but Python's standard library also provides numerous packages that allow Python-using secret agents to easily utilize very sophisticated information processing.

This book will guide new field agent trainees through putting together a Python-based toolset to gather, analyze, and communicate data. It starts by covering the basics and then moves on to sections such as file exchange, image processing, geocoding, simple trigonometry, and more sensitive statistical processing. You will then learn how to use polynomials to encode and decode data in different representations. Furthermore, this book shows you how to add tools to a Python environment, work with images, and parse HTML web pages to extract meaningful data. The idea of adding packages to Python is central to how an agent will leverage these tools for data processing.

Steven F. Lott

Steven F. Lott has been programming since the 70s, when computers were large, expensive, and rare. As a contract software developer and architect, he has worked on hundreds of projects, from very small to very large ones. He's been using Python to solve business problems for over 10 years. He's particularly adept in struggling with gnarly data representation problems. He is also the author of Mastering Object-oriented Python, Packt Publishing. He is currently a technomad who lives in various places on the East Coast of the U.S.