Security Related Coding & algorithms

• The basics
  • Conditions (if, else).
  • Loops (for loops, while loops).
  • Dictionaries.
  • Slices/lists/arrays.
  • String/array operations (split, contaings, length, regular expressions).
  • Pseudo code (concisely describing your approach to a problem).
• Data structures
  • Dictionaries / hash tables (array of linked lists, or sometimes a BST).
  • Arrays.
  • Stacks.
  • SQL/tables.
  • Bigtables.
• Sorting
  • Quicksort, merge sort.
• Searching
  • Binary vs linear.
• Big O
  • For space and time.
• Regular expressions
  • O(n), but O(n!) when matching.
  • It’s useful to be familiar with basic regex syntax, too.
• Recursion
  • And why it is rarely used.
• Python
  • List comprehensions and generators [ x for x in range() ].
  • Iterators and generators.
  • Slicing [start:stop:step].
  • Regular expressions.
  • Types (dynamic types), data structures.
  • Pros and cons of Python vs C, Java, etc.
  • Understand common functions very well, be comfortable in the language.

Security themed coding challenges

• Cyphers / encryption algorithms
  • Be able to implement basic cyphers.
• Parse arbitrary logs
  • Practice text parsing.
• Web scrapers
  • Another way to practice text parsing.
• Port scanners
  • Practice parsing network information.
• Botnets
  • How would you build ssh botnet.
• Password bruteforcer
• Scrape meta data from PDFs
• Script to recover deleted items
• A program that looks for malware signatures in binaries / code samples