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On the plus side, this is a very easy to read book, and goes by very quick, mostly because it is just fluff and nonsense that anyone who even knows what a sniffer is would already know. I gave this book 3 stars only because of its wireless chapter, I had quite a few questions about wireless sniffing and this books one chapter on it managed to answer a good many of them. A good fourth of this book is spent telling you what a sniffer is. the rest of the book is pretty much just as useful, I think I found maybe a dozen snippets of useful information, wireshark is an excellent tool, especially for its ease in wireless settings, but this book is next to worthless, you can get most of what is in here from reading about nmap at [.]., that is another sniffer, a much more powerful sniffer at that, but it does lack some wireshark functionality, and is unreliable for wireless captures.
In fact, the wireless sniffing coverage in 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Ed by Matthew Gast is better. There is no need for all this redundancy.The second disappointment in WEPAT is the inclusion of really old material. If you don't own EPS but want to learn how to use Wireshark, I recommend buying WEPAT.One new feature of WEPAT that helped me in production work was the coverage of Tshark statistics in ch 9. Detecting remote hosts operating NICs in promiscuous mode (a nearly hopeless endeavor in reality) appears in Ch 1, Ch 2, and AGAIN in Ch 4. If you own EPS, you don't need to upgrade. I also liked the new wireless section, Ch 6, especially the coverage of protocols. I am not a Wireshark ninja, but I didn't see much in WEPAT that differed from EPS. Despite the new title, Wireshark & Ethereal Protocol Analyzer Toolkit (WEPAT) is a second edition of Ethereal Packet Sniffing (EPS).
The tip that packet details could be launched in a new window via View -> Show Packet in New Window was also cool. Ch 2 repeats many of the same concepts from Ch 1, like protection against sniffers and other sniffing tools. To add insult to injury, the Wireshark screen captures for displaying relevant traffic are all far too small and fuzzy to be helpful.Third, I didn't learn that much reading WEPAT. Ch 7 uses SQL Slammer (2003), Code Red (2001) and Ramen (2001) as examples of malware for analysis. I liked the regex summary in Ch 5. I reviewed that book almost three years ago, in May 2004. WEPAT has replaced all of the earlier screen captures with Wireshark replacements. On a minor note, Ch 4 was way too long; at 90 pages, it seems reasonable to not try to cover everything in a single chapter.Overall, you need to read WEPAT if you're a Wireshark newbie to intermediary user and you don't have a copy of EPS.
SubSeven, last updated four years ago, is called "one of the most common Windows backdoor trojans" (p 377). Small tools packaged with Wireshark like Tshark, Editcap, Mergecap, and Text2pcap are covered in Ch 2 and Ch 9. First, WEPAT includes updates to nearly all chapters. If you have EPS, you've already got all the relevant information you need in WEPAT.
That is a really powerful technique that was mentioned only in passing on p 177. Add that to EPS and then wait to see wait to see what a third edition Syngress Wireshark book looks like. For example, I would really have liked more emphasis placed on using Wireshark display filters to control capture at the command line using the -R switch. Unfortunately, WEPAT is largely a repeat of EPS, really only featuring a new wireless chapter.
NetBus (last active in 1999), BackOrifice (2000), T0rn (2000), and Rst.b (2002) are other outdated programs mentioned in WEPAT. In adding material, however, the authors ended up repeating certain topics all over the place. I used the advice for displaying top destinations to help me better understand traffic distribution in an unfamiliar network. I thought it was a great idea to explain why "not tcp.port == 80" is the right way to avoid all traffic where port 80 TCP is the source or destination port.Three aspects of WEPAT bugged me.
A very straightforward, direct chapter. It also covers packet capture drivers (ie on Windows). Also, the authors keep calling it Etehreal in places and Wireshark in others. This inconsistency doesn't instill a great amount of trust in me that everything was reviewed well. The title has been changed to more accurately reflect that it's about using Wireshark and not so much about analyzing traffic (although that's covered some), and also to denote that the project changed the name of the software recently.
Filters are covered in Chapter 5, and the PCAP and Wireshark filter languages are covered. Chapter 2 introduces Wireshark and how to begin using it. Sadly, in many places the editors didn't do a good job of auditing the book, so there are some mistakes and sometimes even references to the now obsolete name of Ethereal. Who knows, you may even get it included. These are useful even outside of Wireshark if you work with packet traces at all.
Just like the corresponding chapter in Ethereal Packet Sniffing, Chapter 8 covers developing plugins for Wireshark, specifically new protocol decodes. Chapter 1 is an intro to network analysis, specifically with packet sniffing. Chapter 3 covers getting and installing Wireshark for Windows, Linux, OS X, and how to build it from source. This is a good addition to the book, and even topics such as decoding EAP and WEP are covered. This chapter is very short given what it says it will cover, but most of that is brought up in the following chapters. For the most part this book is an updated version of Ethereal Packet Sniffing.
These are rich languages that allow for complex selectivity, and the chapter is clear and pretty comprehensive. They include Linux worms and Windows malware, and also some coverage of active response packets is given. The chapter is reasonably comprehensive and accurate. A new topic is introduced in Chapter 6, specifically wireless sniffing. It's about 80 pages long and covers the UI and the command line options. That said, it's an improvement over Ethereal Packet Sniffing with some new material and some reorganization.
You can add your favorite new protocol with ease if you follow this chapter. This chapter covers the uncommon graphing and stats sections, and also following streams. Real world packet captures are covered in Chapter 7, which is sadly too short (it could easily be a whole book). This is a good, concise overview of the topic of sniffing wireless networks. Because Wireshark has a framework to extend, it supports dozens of application and network layer protocols. This book is a good update to the Ethereal Packet Sniffing book and material.
These programs let you manage packet traces and marge them or cut them down to size. However, the additions and improvements over the older version make this book worthwhile for anyone who needs to learn how to fully utilize this powerful sniffer. This is a real gem of the book.Finally, Chapter 9 covers many of the auxiliary programs that are included with Wireshark. It's very cursory, and they could do a better job of teaching this subject, but honestly that's a whole book unto itself and years of practice. Several representative traces are included on the CD ROM that are good to study and review in this chapter. The screen captures are better than the previous version of the book (and they often times use just a portion of the screen), but they could still be improved for legibility and for usefulness.
There's a brief bit about Wireshark security, but again it's too cursory (2 paragraphs for a program that ha sa constant stream of security issues). Using Wireshark is the next chapter, and this is where we start the meat of the book.
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