It can also help to prove the use of any insecure protocol(s) used to transmit sensitive information.Īs Christopher Hitchens, a British-born American author, was once quoted saying: Security analysts use sniffing to gather evidence in the case of a security breach with regard to the source of the attack, time and duration of the attack, protocols and port numbers involved, and data transmitted for the purpose of the attack. Sniffing helps a network analyst verify whether the implementation and functionality of the network and network security devices, such as the router, switch, firewall, IDS, or IPS, are as expected and also confirms that data is traversing through secure channels of communication. Just as a poison flowing through the veins of the human body has the potential to kill an individual, similarly malicious traffic traversing our networks can have a severe and sometimes irreparable effect on the network devices, performance, and business continuity. Packet sniffing is performed in order to better understand what flows through our networks.

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