Wireshark is an open-source and cross-platform packet analyzer that is used for network analysis, troubleshooting, software and communications protocol development, and education. Wireshark has been developed continuously since 1998 by Gerald Combs. It won the prestigious InfoWorld Editors’ Choice Award for Network Security Monitoring Software in 2007. The latest version 3.0.0 was released on March 31, 2013.
Wireshark is a program that enables the user to capture and browse packet data from a live network or from a previously saved capture file. Using Wireshark it is possible to examine data from different networking layers, including Ethernet, IPv4, TCP, and HTTP. The following is an example of the kind of information that can be viewed using Wireshark:
- Protocol Hierarchy, which provides the ability to drill down to view only those protocols of interest;
- A list of the protocols found within each packet.
- The actual contents of each field.
- A hexadecimal and ASCII dump of each field.
Wireshark can be used for penetration testing, forensics, and network audit. - A penetration tester uses Wireshark to identify the protocols in use by a target system, including those being used by an intrusion prevention system or firewall. Wireshark enables the investigation of network traffic to determine details about protocol implementation and application behavior.
Network and Data Analysis is the process of monitoring and troubleshooting the service quality of computer networks. Network traffic analysis has two different goals: For each goal, there are different tasks, tools, data sources, and toolsets.
A lot of tools are available for network and data analysis. Some examples are TCPDUMP, TRACEROUTE, NETSTAT, SO WATCH, PERL-SNMP-Net-Cisco (collection of Perl modules), or Wireshark. One popular multi-functional tool is a Sniffer-type program. Sniffer Programs capture network packets from the wire as they pass by on a network interface.
Key Points:
- A user can use Wireshark to capture information packets transmitted by the wired/wireless network media and then analyze its content.
- Wireshark helps a user to understand application layer protocols. (Example: HTTP, FTP, SSL, SSH, etc.)
- Users can capture the outgoing/incoming data from applications.
- It is easy to use and widely used in computer software industries and educational organizations for testing their own system security measures.
- The tool can be used for troubleshooting as well as monitoring purposes.
- The tool is open source and free of cost. Hence, it is widely used by most developers and organizations around the world.
- Wireshark can help a user to trace the exact location of the system, device, or network
- It is possible to see what information is shared with other systems or applications and whether any data was modified in an unauthorized way.
- It helps a user to understand malicious activities and prevents unauthorized access to an organization’s network.
- The tool also provides export options in order to save captured packets into standard pcap format files.
- Hence, it makes it easy for any expert to analyze the raw network data and take informed decisions at their own discretion.
- Wireshark is a lightweight and portable tool that can be downloaded from many websites freely.
Countermeasures:
- A strong password is the best choice.
- The users should ensure that they keep the Wireshark software updated and authorized to run.
- Antivirus program alerts are the paramount measures to take into consideration.
Conclusion:
Wireshark is very important from the security perspective. The benefits of using Wireshark are numerous, and therefore it should be used to the fullest by an individual. In today’s era, most organizations use Wireshark for their security issues for detecting any suspicious activities on their networks and systems.
We can say that the history of Wireshark is a great journey through which security professionals made a difference. This has been possible because Wireshark was invented by a group of people who have a concern about network security, and they worked on this software in order to give some new direction to this industry.