

“Sniffing” is the process of monitoring and capturing data packets passing through a given network using software or hardware devices.

The primary objectives of this lab are to: The objective of this lab is to make students learn to sniff a network and analyze packets for any attacks on the network. It determines the network, system, and organizational information. It helps to find vulnerabilities and select exploits for an attack. Sniffing is performed to collect basic information from the target and its network. Complete the lab that follows on EC-Council’s website using the link below. There are numerous network attacks that you could detect by monitoring and analyzing your network’s packets flow.Īnything from Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Poisoning to Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Flooding and Virtual LAN (VLAN) Hopping attacks leave obvious traces, even if unsuccessful.īy regularly capturing data packets from your network and then filtering them, you’d be able to signal out attempts to access your network without permission.Consider what you have learned so far about Sniffing as you review the objectives and scenario below. Just because you’re using your home’s Wi-Fi connection doesn’t mean your connection is fully secure. Identifying and Learning from Attempted Attacks You’ll also get access to HTTP traffic and be able to analyze included server and client responses and requests.

Too many errors in data transfer could slow down your connection as the server attempts to resend the same data over and over. Since the source, destination, and overall journey of each data packer is captured and analyzed, you’d be able to detect issues such as slow or under-performing web servers. By using Wireshark’s filtering and analysis tools, you’ll be able to narrow down the scale of the packages that could be responsible for the network error. Troubleshooting Connection ProblemsĬapturing a portion of data packets going through the network connection is the first step towards error diagnosis. Related: What Is Packet Sniffing and How Can You Stop Sniffing Attacks?īy analyzing captured data packets using Wireshark, you’ll gain information on how and when data moves around in your network and whether there’s any activity you don’t recognize. If the network you’re sniffing is anything but your own private network-a public Wi-Fi connection, for instance-sniffing could be unethical or illegal depending on the data you’re observing and collecting. Sniffing isn’t a privacy-friendly practice. The goal of sniffing is to monitor and scan the data entering and leaving the network to "sniff out" malicious or problematic data flow. Packet sniffing is the practice of observing, collecting, and logging data packets flowing through a network.
