Analyzing packets for key information

In the previous section, part of our discussion was about utilizing display filters for protocols such as http, ftp, and nfs. Understanding how to apply these filters and extracting key data is crucial to a successful pentesting engagement. Additionally, understanding who is communicating with who on the network and quickly applying a filter to hone in on critical details are an absolute must and require ongoing practice to get good at performing traffic analysis. In the previous section, I supplied some links, and I just want to reiterate that you need to practice honing your skills. People refer to pentesters as cyber Samurai or digital ninjas: they practice daily in order to strengthen and master their skills. In this section, we will perform analyses on multiple packet captures to demonstrate how to approach a network packet capture file and extract the key information required to drive success to our assessment.

Note

One of the key elements...