Capturing network traffic
The technique of capturing network traffic is also known as sniffing. Think of sniffing as listening into a conversation. When you listen in on a conversation between two people, you can learn a lot about either the people themselves or the topic that they are talking about. Likewise, in computing, listening to network traffic can enable you to gain a wealth of information. For instance, think about the types of traffic that traverse a network. These include email, web, and authentication. All of these categories have both unprotected and protected communication options. This means that they can be either encrypted or not encrypted.
When performing packet capturing, you would need to utilize a network sniffer. What a sniffer essentially does is turn a network interface card into a listening device by making it work in promiscuous mode. Promiscuous mode enables the network interface card to listen to and receive all packets that traverse the network, even...
