Secure coding
While not all security roles explicitly require coding skills, it is difficult to envision a career in this field that would not benefit substantially from at least a basic understanding of the principles coding fundamentals.
September 27, 2023
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4 minutes. read
Coding is an essential skill in many aspects of today’s technology-driven society and is of growing importance to many job seekers and students, including those considering a career in cybersecurity. While not all security roles explicitly require coding skills, it is difficult to envision a career in this field that, at some point, would not reap substantial benefits from at least a basic understanding of fundamental principles. coding principles.
In this article, we’ll review five of the most commonly used programming languages in security and highlight the main benefits of each.
Python
Python is known for its extensive collection of tools and libraries, ease of use and compatibility with other platforms and technologies, as well as having one of the most active developer communities . All this makes it one of the most widely used programming languages in the field of cybersecurity, where it is often used for automation of repetitive tasks, auditing, forensic analysis and data analysis. malware.
Like a script language, it can be very useful for solving a specific problem, such as analyzing malware and extracting information from it, decrypting its configuration, or performing other types of low-level analysis.
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It is a simple and easy to learn programming language, with a much shorter learning curve than some other languages. It often requires much less code than other programming languages. Because it is open source, information about it is abundant.
PHP
While PHP is most commonly used in web development, there are also many ways to apply it to cybersecurity. An example is scanning PHP-based web applications or looking for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS).
PHP can also be useful in identifying suspicious behavior in web applications or web servers by analyzing their logs and looking for patterns that may indicate a compromise or security vulnerability.
Finally, although the possibilities for developing security tools in other languages are very wide, PHP also allows you to create custom web user interfaces or integrate different security features into the control panel.
JavaScript
JavaScript, also known as “JS”, is an interpreted, object-oriented scripting programming language. It is widely used in the development of different legitimate applications including websites, mobile applications, and games among others. If you want to delve into web application security (and associated vulnerabilities), having a good command of JavaScript will be important to your career prospects.
In the field of cybersecurity, it can be used for malware analysis, that is, for analyzing code found in malicious files or websites, ideally in a virtual machine or in a isolated environment to avoid possible compromise on the physical computer. JavaScript also allows you to create functions that will be invoked immediately upon execution of the script.
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Attackers often distribute malicious code developed in JavaScript with a high level of obfuscation in order to complicate the work of cybersecurity analysts and to attempt to evade detection by security software.
SQL
Although Structured Query Language (SQL) is not a general-purpose programming language, having a good understanding of how relational databases work with this query language is a very useful skill for those performing security audits. code and penetration testing.
SQL is widely used to query and update this type of database and its knowledge can help find security vulnerabilities in an application’s code which, in the worst case, can lead to unauthorized access to an application or a system or theft of sensitive data. information.
Administrators and developers write SQL queries for a variety of purposes: retrieving, updating, or deleting information stored in database tables, among others. In turn, SQL injection represents one of the most frequent attacks against web applications, for which it is necessary to carry out penetration tests and identify and remedy these flaws.
PowerShell
PowerShell is often used for configuration management and task automation, making it an excellent choice for environments where Windows operating systems are prevalent. In forensic analysis, PowerShell can be very useful when it comes to recovering information and understanding how attackers entered a system during a security breach.
Strong knowledge of PowerShell can also be put to good use in penetration testing, in the various steps involved during the process, such as exploit execution, service analysis, and malware analysis.
Conclusion
There are obviously other programming languages widely used in cybersecurity, such as C and C++, Java, Bash, Go and Ruby, but these will be the subject of future blog posts.
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