5ANALYSIS FROM THE WIRE

In Chapter 2, I discussed how to capture network traffic for analysis. Now it’s time to put that knowledge to the test. In this chapter, we’ll examine how to analyze captured network protocol traffic from a chat application to understand the protocol in use. If you can determine which features a protocol supports, you can assess its security.

Analysis of an unknown protocol is typically incremental. You begin by capturing network traffic, and then analyze it to try to understand what each part of the traffic represents. Throughout this chapter, I’ll show you how to use Wireshark and some custom code to inspect an unknown network protocol. Our approach will include extracting structures and state information.

The Traffic-Producing ...

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