Goodbye Ethereal—Hello WireShark
This week Ethereal, one of the most popular security and network tools, has had its name changed to WireShark. As this article explains, Gerald Combs, the creator of Ethereal, has moved to a new company and the former employer holds the copyright for the name Ethereal. Because the two parties couldn’t come to an agreement, Combs changed the name to WireShark.
WireShark is a packet sniffing tool that allows people on a local area network (LAN) to “eavesdrop” on other users’ Internet activity. WireShark is a real eye-opener for those unfamiliar with the inherent insecurity of Ethernet-based LAN’s (by far the most dominant LAN technology). For example, a person using WireShark (or a score of similar tools) could easily “listen” to the network traffic in a hotel or wireless hotspot and capture people’s emails, passwords, or other sensitive information.
WireShark and others like it take advantage of the openness of the Ethernet protocol, which was designed for a friendlier computing era, as were so many other network technologies. Fortunately, packet sniffing can be protected against by using a VPN.