4Packet Capture and Analysis

He has begun to move into the servers and away from the desktops, feeling like he has enough desktops from this particular network under his belt. The challenge with the servers, though, is that they are likely to be better monitored. This may mean that an administrator has a packet capture running. Even if he is encrypting his communication to the server, he realizes that anyone capturing packets would be able to see at least where he is coming from and that backdoor port is going to look a little suspicious over time. Fortunately, it isn't that hard to determine whether an administrator is capturing packets. Checking out the list of running programs will work, searching for well-known programs that will do that. On top of that, it's possible to see whether the network interface has been placed into the mode necessary to capture traffic.

Unfortunately, he is aware that just because no one is watching him from this system doesn't mean that no one is watching him from somewhere else. It could be that a network administrator is watching using a spanning port or a network tap. Nothing much to do about it, though. Encrypt and move fast. Hope any users or system administrators don't see it and shut everything down ...

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