Book Image

Mastering Wireshark 2

By : Andrew Crouthamel
Book Image

Mastering Wireshark 2

By: Andrew Crouthamel

Overview of this book

Wireshark, a combination of a Linux distro (Kali) and an open source security framework (Metasploit), is a popular and powerful tool. Wireshark is mainly used to analyze the bits and bytes that flow through a network. It efficiently deals with the second to the seventh layer of network protocols, and the analysis made is presented in a form that can be easily read by people. Mastering Wireshark 2 helps you gain expertise in securing your network. We start with installing and setting up Wireshark2.0, and then explore its interface in order to understand all of its functionalities. As you progress through the chapters, you will discover different ways to create, use, capture, and display filters. By halfway through the book, you will have mastered Wireshark features, analyzed different layers of the network protocol, and searched for anomalies. You’ll learn about plugins and APIs in depth. Finally, the book focuses on pocket analysis for security tasks, command-line utilities, and tools that manage trace files. By the end of the book, you'll have learned how to use Wireshark for network security analysis and configured it for troubleshooting purposes.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributor
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Installing Wireshark 2
Index

Capturing traffic


One of the first things I'm sure you want to do in Wireshark is to begin capturing some traffic so that you can get used to the utility and possibly diagnose some issues on your own network. In this section, we'll talk about exactly that: where to capture that traffic and how to capture it.

Wireshark needs to receive packets in one way or another, so that you may begin analyzing the data and performing your network diagnostics. There are several ways of doing so in Wireshark. One way is to begin capturing on a local device with Wireshark installed through the GUI. You also have the option of doing so through a command-line. You can capture remotely from a Wireshark install on a management computer, for example. It can retrieve the packets being received and sent from a device somewhere else on your network, using a special driver install. You can also capture the traffic inline on the wire, which means you place a device called a test action port (TAP) somewhere along the...