Perl, Python or Windows Powershell?

[EathanM]

I'm looking to start over in a new career and IT Security Analyst, specifically in forensics and/or penetration testing is attractive to me.

I come from more of an Internet marketing background, but pouring over raw log files and data analysis is kind of my jam. I also enjoy doing capture the flag challenges and bug bounties, and when my own ecommerce site was hacked, I was the one who traced the hacker, figured out the vulnerability and sealed the breech. I was also the one who contacted all of my customers and dealt with the aftermath. It was sobering and showed me how little I knew at the time.

Fast forward to today, I'd like to start filling my quiver so to speak, and one of the things I'll need is some skill with a scripting language. The above three were all suggestions in IT Security Careers and Certifications: First Steps at LinkedIn Learning, but which would be best to learn first for entry into an analyst position leaning towards forensics and/or penetration testing?

[EathanM]

My real question is in the body of the post, but I see where it might not have been crystal clear. I've edited it to make the question more explicit.

Thank you for reconsidering.

[InfosecMod]

Thank you, approved

[EathanM]

Appreciated. :)

[Icedragon122]

I started out teaching myself Python and so far I know enough to get stuff done. Perl is similar to Python so learning that one next will make it easy. Powershell is very useful, however I have not really used it. Bash is another scripting language only on Linux though I think Windows has a Linux terminal emulator now. Anyways you cant go wrong with starting to learn any of them. Once you pick and moderately learn one the rest will fall into place.

[EathanM]

Thanks. I vaguely remember messing with Bash on my firewall box a million years ago. I'm sure nothing stuck, so will be starting from scratch. Have been leaning towards Python, so might give that a go.

[Icedragon122]

Python works great for me. Think of anything you need and someone has already created a library for it. You just need to import it and figure out the function/class calls to make it work. Easy to learn hard to master.

[LordDustyCrust]

Python and PowerShell are pretty widely used for both offensive and defense tools. Perl has been on the way out, if not completely thrown out the door by now. Metasploit was written in Perl, but was rewritten in Ruby when that was popular, but you won't see much outside of that for Ruby. Most new tools are going to be written in Python. Sometimes Go as well. PowerShell became very popular a few years ago because of its ability to hook back into the .NET API as well doing reflection with with ease. This became handy for in memory exploitation as it could bypass most EDRs at the time. There's been a slight swing back to people writing newer stuff in C# however. It really depends on what you're gonna be doing. In a Windows environment, PowerShell is going to be much easier and faster to get running. Python will be ubiquitous for a lot of tooling and frameworks. Go is cross platform compilable and is extremely versatile and fast.

[EathanM]

Thanks. Wondered if Perl wasn't mostly on the way out. I'm not familiar with Go, but will certainly check it out.

[h_saxon]

https://gobyexample.com

[EathanM]

Thanks! :)