For a demonstration environment that we will use in this course,
we will be using Kali Linux as our operating system,
Python version 3.10.5, Scapy version 2.4.5,
iPython 8.4.0, and Microsoft Visual Studio Code as our Python IDE.
The main advantage of this environment is that all of the
software being used is free and can be relatively easy to set
up in many different environments.
Let's start by talking about Kali Linux.
Kali is a Linux distribution built on top of Debian Linux
and was created as a distribution that is focused for
networking security professionals.
It usually comes preinstalled with many of the common networking security
tools that can be used to perform a number of different tasks.
To obtain a copy of Kali, head over to www.kali.org/get‑kali.
At this link,
they will have options for all of the different
environments that it is supported on.
For our environment, we will be using it as a virtual machine.
In our case, since we install it as a virtual machine,
the only thing that we need it to do was update Kali using the sudo
apt update and sudo apt full‑upgrade commands.
Once complete,
this results as of the recording of this course with a
copy of Python 3.10.5 and Scapy 2.4.4.
To update to the later, 2.4.5 Scapy version,
use the pip install command with the scapy==2.4.5 as your target module.
If this course is being watched when later versions have been introduced,
you can use this structure to specify the version that you want to install.
We use this same command structure in our environment to
update to the latest version of iPython.
As of this recording, this is 8.4.0,
so the command that we used was pip install ipython==8.4.0.
iPython will be used for the CLI when we are working within Scapy.
Next, we need to install Visual Studio Code.
To install this,
head over to code.visualstudio.com and download the
version for your environment.
For our environment,
we chose to set up the system using the Microsoft Visual Studio Code repos.
When done in this way,
it allows the standard Kali package managers to be used to install with
the apt install code command being run from the CLI.
So with this now reviewed,
let's move into this module and begin by talking
about what the Scapy module provides.