The need for sniffing traffic
Why does a penetration tester need to understand the benefits of packet sniffing? Packet sniffing enables a penetration tester to monitor and capture network traffic along a segment of the network. Sniffing on a computer network is also a form of wiretapping. Wiretapping involves implanting a device into traffic along a wire, such as a network cable or a telephone wire, for the purpose of monitoring and capturing sensitive data.
The following are some examples of sensitive information that may be captured by a packet sniffer:
- Telnet traffic
- FTP usernames and passwords
- DNS traffic
- Web traffic
- Email traffic
- Generally any username and password sent in plaintext format
These are just a few, however a lot more information is sent along the network in the form of bits. A sniffer can be either hardware-based or software-based to be planted on a network. A hardware-based sniffer usually has at least two interfaces (ports); this allows the hardware-based sniffer to be placed...
