Warning: transmitting/receiving sensitive information - Administration
Do you need to sniff out and spy on network communications in a LAN, WAN or any network configuration? Or have you found yourself in a difficult situation troubleshooting network-related problems inside and outside of your network? Then you need a network analyzer to examine the packets going into and out of certain media. Wireshark can help. Keep reading to find out how.
The bad news is that if you are working in a company and you are surfing/logging in to your personal websites, finances, etc., the network administrator can spy on your communication if you are not encrypting your packets. It means your account, passwords and identity are compromised.
Of course, they won't tell you they use Wireshark, but a lot of administrators will do so -- especially if your manager has doubts about your use of time and requests administrators to spy on your communication. This is the same problem you encounter if you use public-based Internet stations, such as those in a coffee shop with wireless Internet connections or an Internet café.
Discussing methods for encrypting network communications is beyond the scope of this article. There are, however, two common ways you can effectively encrypt your entire data communication:
When browsing websites, you can use SSH, which is an encrypting protocol.
SSH can also be used with your chat software (Skype, Yahoo messenger).
When logging in websites, and submitting passwords, use HTTPS (secure HTTP). Some reputable sites do this, like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
In this way, packets are encrypted and there is no way to compromise information using Wireshark packet analysis. If you are interested in encryption, particularly OpenSSH protocol, you may be interested in reading these tutorials:
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