You're reading from PowerShell Automation and Scripting for Cybersecurity

Product type Book

Published in Aug 2023

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781800566378

Pages 572 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

Concepts

Shell Scripting

Author (1):

Miriam C. Wiesner

Table of Contents (19) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 1: PowerShell Fundamentals

2. Chapter 1: Getting Started with PowerShell

3. Chapter 2: PowerShell Scripting Fundamentals

4. Chapter 3: Exploring PowerShell Remote Management Technologies and PowerShell Remoting

5. Chapter 4: Detection – Auditing and Monitoring

6. Part 2: Digging Deeper – Identities, System Access, and Day-to-Day Security Tasks

7. Chapter 5: PowerShell Is Powerful – System and API Access

8. Chapter 6: Active Directory – Attacks and Mitigation

9. Chapter 7: Hacking the Cloud – Exploiting Azure Active Directory/Entra ID

10. Chapter 8: Red Team Tasks and Cookbook

11. Chapter 9: Blue Team Tasks and Cookbook

12. Part 3: Securing PowerShell – Effective Mitigations In Detail

13. Chapter 10: Language Modes and Just Enough Administration (JEA)

14. Chapter 11: AppLocker, Application Control, and Code Signing

15. Chapter 12: Exploring the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI)

16. Chapter 13: What Else? – Further Mitigations and Resources

17. Index

Why subscribe?

18. Other Books You May Enjoy

Variables

A variable is a storage location that developers can use to store information with a so-called value. Variables always have names that allow you to call them independently of the values that are stored within. In PowerShell, the $ sign at the beginning indicates a variable:

> $i = 1

> $string = "Hello World!"

> $this_is_a_variable = "test"

Variables are great for storing simple values, strings, and also the output of commands:

> Get-Date

Monday, November 2, 2020 6:43:59 PM

> $date = Get-Date

> Write-Host "Today is" $date

Today is 11/2/2020 6:44:40 PM

As you can see in these examples, not only can we store strings and numbers within a variable, we can also store the output of a cmdlet such as Get-Date and reuse it within our code.

Data types

In contrast to other scripting or programming languages, you don’t necessarily need to define the data type for variables. When defining a variable...