But please understand that GRC CAN NOT PROVIDE any other form of technical support for users of packet sniffing software.ĪLL questions or observations regarding Packet We have also created a private 'packetsniffing' newsgroup forum for the discussion of packet sniffing software, findings, and questions. Everything you could want to know is spelled out in those volumes. At the end of this page I have assembled references to a number of extremely good texts. The use of powerful packet sniffing software by people who lack a thorough understanding of TCP/IP and Internet protocols will without question create significant confusion and raise a large number of questions. One note of warning before we go any further:

But, unfortunately, all of the tools I have located avidly feature promiscuous sniffing capabilities. This is obviously not an activity that I wish to promote on this site, and if non-promiscuous sniffing software were available I would be recommending it.

Unfortunately, this capability allows packet sniffers to be used as potent spying tools.

One disturbingly powerful aspect of packet sniffers is their ability to place the hosting machine's network adapter into 'promiscuous mode.' Network adapters running in promiscuous mode receive not only the data directed to the machine hosting the sniffing software, but also ALL of the traffic on the physically connected local network. Packet sniffers merely watch, display, and log this traffic. By comparison, a firewall sees all of a computer's packet traffic as well, but it has the ability to block and drop any packets that its programming dictates. Since the typical PC user never 'sees' any of this raw data, many spyware systems covertly send sensitive information out of the user's computer without their knowledge.Ī 'Packet Sniffer' is a utility that sniffs without modifying the network's packets in any way. Request for the IP address of its default server ''Īll network data travels across the Internet, and then into and out of PC's, in the form of individual, variable size, 'data packets' like the one shown above. Packet data of DNS (Domain Name System) reply to Aureate software's By Steve Gibson, Gibson Research Corporation

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