WireShark

Wireshark is used to analyze packet captures, validate protocol behavior, investigate potential data exfiltration paths, and gather authoritative network-level evidence. Through detailed inspection and annotation of relevant traffic flows, it supports technical findings and informs remediation guidance.

Conceptually, Wireshark decodes captured packets to reveal protocol exchanges across multiple network layers. Common analysis tasks include isolating conversations between hosts, identifying plaintext credential exposure, and verifying the presence and integrity of encrypted channels. Typical outputs consist of filtered capture segments, annotated protocol streams, and timeline visualizations that corroborate higher-level assessment results.

This technique is most often applied during reconnaissance or vulnerability assessment phases. The rationale is that packet analysis provides low-level confirmation of network behaviors and helps validate or contextualize vulnerabilities identified at the application or infrastructure level. Portfolio examples might describe neutral cases such as extracting and annotating protocol streams to demonstrate configuration weaknesses within technical appendices.