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Sniffing tools

  • Also known as • sniffer • packet analyzer • protocol analyzer • network analyzer
  • 💡 Not only used for hacking but also for troubleshooting by e.g. system administrators

Cain and Abel

libpcap

TCPflow

  • Open-source TCP/IP packet demultiplexer.
  • Stores data in a way that makes it convenient for debugging and analysis
  • Like tcpdump however, separate files for each direction are created, making things easier to read.
  • Uses libpcap

tcpdump

  • 📝 Command-line tool to show all TCP traffic from all interfaces live.
  • Built-in for all Unix systems, has a Windows clone called WinDump
  • Developed and maintains libpcap
  • See man page | tcpdump.org

Wireshark

  • 📝 Also known as Ethereal (old name)
  • 📝 Captures and visualize traffic.
  • 📝 tshark: Terminal-based Wireshark like tcpdump
  • Can be started from Window managers or command line

Turning on promiscuous mode

  • Allows capturing all traffic, see Promiscuous mode | Sniffing
  • On Linux/macOS it's done through libpcap
  • 📝 On Windows a driver is required:
    • npcap: Driver from Nmap developers
    • WinPcap: Discontinued driver
    • AirPcap: Obsolete, propriety USB dongle used when there was no open-source Windows driver

Wireshark non-root installation

  • Running wireshark as root is not safest
    • You're receiving traffic from an unknown location
    • If anything goes wrong, people can gain root access
  • Install wireshark by e.g. apt-get install wireshark-gtk (varies by OS)
  • usermod -a -G wireshark <user-name> to install it as non-root user
    • Adds wireshark to user account.

📝 Wireshark UI

Wireshark UI

  1. Title Bar
    • Shows the name of the interface you're capturing until you save your capture
    • Then it shows the name of the capture dump
  2. Packet List Pane
    • You can add/remove/reorder columns
    • Selecting a packet will show more details in the Packet Details Pane and Packet Bytes Pane
  3. Intelligent Scrollbar
    • Mini-map of packets
    • Depends on the height of the list and your physical display's specifications.
  4. Packet Details Pane
    • Displays protocol fields
    • Generated Fields
      • Enclosed in brackets ([ ])
      • Contains info such as TCP analysis, response time, checksum validation, and IP geolocation.
    • Links
      • Wireshark will generate a link if it detects relationships between packets.
      • Formatted blue with an underline.
      • Double-clicking on the link will jump you to the related packet.
  5. Packet Bytes Pane
    • Hexdump style with each line displaying the data offset
      • 16 hexadecimal bytes, and 16 ASCII bytes
  6. The Statusbar
    • Informational messages

Wireshark filtering

Display filters

  • Control which packets are displayed
  • Uses search and match operators such as contains and matches
    • E.g. http contains hello: TCP packets containing string "hello"
  • Uses search comparisons
    • Such as
      • Equal: eq | ==
      • Not equal: ne | !=
      • Greater than: gt | >
      • Less than: lt | <
      • Greater than or equal to: ge | >=
      • Less than or equal to: le | <=
    • 📝 E.g.
      • tcp.port eq 21 or ssh: show only FTP (port 21) or SSH traffic.
      • ip.addr == 192.168.1.1: examine all traffic from and to 192.168.1.1s

Capture filters

  • Also known as PCAP filters
  • Same syntax as tcpdump or any other application using libpcap
  • Much more limited than display filters
  • Reduce the size of a raw packet capture, set before capturing
  • E.g.
    • Only from traffic to / from specific host: host 172.18.5.4
    • Only from a range of IP addresses: src net 192.168.0.0/24

Kismet

  • Kismet is an open-source wireless network and device detector, passive network sniffer, wardriving tool, and WIDS (Wireless Intrusion Detection system) framework.
  • Can export in a compatible format for
    • cracking with aircrack-ng for deep packet analysis with a tool like Wireshark / tshark.
  • Kismet can discover wireless networks that are not sending beacon frames.
    • Even if the security admin turns beaconing off (so no one can supposedly search for the SSIDs)

Kismet vs Wireshark

  • Both looks at the contents of the packets and decodes them but presents them differently
    • Wireshark is packet oriented: digs into specifics of each packet
    • Kismet is device oriented: more device details, association with client.
  • Both are passive-monitoring tools i.e. works without sending any loggable packets.
  • Kismet is Wi-Fi only while Wireshark can also sniff on wired networks.

Mobile tools