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Python is a Hit With Hackers, Report Finds (zdnet.com)
After breaking into the top three most popular programming languages for the first time this month, behind C and Java, Python has also won the hearts of hackers and web nasties, according to attack statistics published this week by web security biz Imperva. From a report: The company says more than a third of daily attacks against sites the company protects come from a malicious or legitimate tool coded in Python. Imperva says that around 77 percent of all the sites the company protects, have been attacked by at least one Python-based tool. Furthermore, when the company looked at the list of tools that hackers used for their attacks, more than a quarter were coded in Python, by far the attackers' favorite tool. "Hackers, like developers, enjoy Python's advantages which makes it a popular hacking tool," the Imperva team says.
Yea that's sortof my take on this, too. It's got a lot less to do with Python's practical usefulness and a lot more to do with how trends get set in script kiddie communities.
Python is definitely the language to use when you want to get the tool developed fast, but not the best if that tool needs to run fast.