EvilZone

Where I work, I often have to access people's accounts on their company owned computers (like if they leave/are fired, or if I need to do work on the system in general).  In this case, I often will use password crackers to get me access to these accounts.  I sometimes just ask the person to write down their password, but honestly it's more fun for me to crack it (plus it's good practice, as I already have authorization to access these computers). 

So yes, while a lot of password crackers are used for less-than-legal means, they're actually very helpful for IT professionals, too. Hope this helped!

Hey Cranoo,

Yeah, the syntax changed a bit (i.e raw_input() just became input() ), but something to consider is do you really need to use 3 over 2?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying don't learn it; I used python 3 to create a script to sort through IP subnets at work because of the handy IP modules 3 has.  However, python 2 comes installed on a lot of systems currently, like Macs and most Linux distros, whereas anything needing 3 you would need to install 3 specifically.  If you're trying to execute a python script on a remote system, you may want to just do it in 2.  There's also a tool called py2exe that can create .exe files for Windows off of python 2 scripts, but it doesn't work on python 3 (last time I checked the project).

But if this is just for your own scripts/education, I would say check out what Phage suggested and the official docs. There's more support out there for 2 right now so you'll probably need to do things the hard way for 3 for now.

Good luck!

Packet Tracer has new versions available, for both Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows.  All you need is Java.  If you have something other than Ubuntu or Windows, just get a VM going with one of those.  Or, as cyberdrifter said, you could try Wine.

Cisco Packet Tracer 6.2  Cisco Packet Tracer Version 6.2 includes fixes to many community-reported bugs and provides the following enhanced functionality:
 

• New devices: Cisco 819 router, Cell Tower, CO server, Sniffer
• New capability to add devices directly in physical view
• HTTP server now supports JavaScript and CSS
• FTP server can manage files used in HTTP server
• Improved IOS command support[/l][/l][/l][/l]

Here's the tar ball for Linux and the .exe for Windows.  The Linux version has tutorials, the Windows does not.  Feel free to scan then to verify they're clean.  Have fun![/list]

Thanks so much, Deque.  This was really informative and helpful.  I like the "learn by doing" approach, so thanks for taking the time to detail all this out.