Finding Out What A Sniffer Is
When you hear the word sniffer, many different thoughts may pass through your mind, but when in the company of people who work on computers you can be assured it has to do with something computer related. Basically, what they are normally referring to is a piece of software or device with the software integrated that probes or snoops the traffic on the computer network, simply sniffing out information.
Their primary use is to monitor the network traffic and to watch everything going on. They determine where information is going, where it is coming from and looking at what it is. It is capable of filtering certain types of data and capturing certain information, such as passwords. There are some very sophisticated programs that are even able to rebuild date that has been sent over the internet network, like an email or web pages.
These software programs were designed to keep the flow of traffic running smoothly over networks and allow administrators the ability to monitor and analyze this traffic to detect any problems. A lot of colleges and schools now use these in the academic networks to prevent online bottlenecks that are caused by the popular file sharing programs that a lot of students use today.
Network engineers and administrators were the first to use these types of programs. Today, everyone has the ability to use them since they are now widely available. There are those people that are just curious about such things and use them to see how they work. And, there are those, like hackers, who take advantage of their use for their own benefit.
Knowing how networks work can help you understand how they work, but the basics are rather simple. A computer has a network interface card or simply an NIC. This card is made to pay attention and "listen" to only the packets of date that is addressed to it and to ignore all over "conversations" on the network. But when these programs gets involved, they tell the NIC to listen to everything going through the network by putting the NIC in promiscuous mode. This permits it to capture every little piece of information that is going between two computers which will allow it to decode, store and do much more with the data that it is collecting.
Educating yourself more on what a sniffer is can help you prepare for a time when you may have to deal with one. As these are assets to many large companies, you'll now be able to at least understand what everyone is talking about when the term comes up again in the office or among colleagues and friends.
Their primary use is to monitor the network traffic and to watch everything going on. They determine where information is going, where it is coming from and looking at what it is. It is capable of filtering certain types of data and capturing certain information, such as passwords. There are some very sophisticated programs that are even able to rebuild date that has been sent over the internet network, like an email or web pages.
These software programs were designed to keep the flow of traffic running smoothly over networks and allow administrators the ability to monitor and analyze this traffic to detect any problems. A lot of colleges and schools now use these in the academic networks to prevent online bottlenecks that are caused by the popular file sharing programs that a lot of students use today.
Network engineers and administrators were the first to use these types of programs. Today, everyone has the ability to use them since they are now widely available. There are those people that are just curious about such things and use them to see how they work. And, there are those, like hackers, who take advantage of their use for their own benefit.
Knowing how networks work can help you understand how they work, but the basics are rather simple. A computer has a network interface card or simply an NIC. This card is made to pay attention and "listen" to only the packets of date that is addressed to it and to ignore all over "conversations" on the network. But when these programs gets involved, they tell the NIC to listen to everything going through the network by putting the NIC in promiscuous mode. This permits it to capture every little piece of information that is going between two computers which will allow it to decode, store and do much more with the data that it is collecting.
Educating yourself more on what a sniffer is can help you prepare for a time when you may have to deal with one. As these are assets to many large companies, you'll now be able to at least understand what everyone is talking about when the term comes up again in the office or among colleagues and friends.
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