Hands-On Penetration Testing with Kali NetHunter

The need for sniffing traffic

Why does a penetration tester need to understand the benefits of packet sniffing? Packet sniffing enables a penetration tester to monitor and capture network traffic along a segment of the network. Sniffing on a computer network is also a form of wiretapping. Wiretapping involves implanting a device into traffic along a wire, such as a network cable or a telephone wire, for the purpose of monitoring and capturing sensitive data.

The following are some examples of sensitive information that may be captured by a packet sniffer:

• Telnet traffic
• FTP usernames and passwords
• DNS traffic
• Web traffic
• Email traffic
• Generally any username and password sent in plaintext format

These are just a few, however a lot more information ...