Analyzing Network Traffic with Wireshark

When to Use

• Investigating suspected network intrusions by examining packet-level evidence of command-and-control traffic, data exfiltration, or lateral movement
• Diagnosing network performance issues such as retransmissions, fragmentation, or DNS resolution failures
• Analyzing malware communication patterns by capturing traffic from sandboxed or isolated hosts
• Validating firewall and IDS rules by confirming what traffic is actually traversing network segments
• Extracting files, credentials, or indicators of compromise from captured network sessions

Do not use to capture traffic on networks without authorization, to intercept private communications without legal authority, or as a substitute for full-featured SIEM platforms in production monitoring.

Prerequisites

• Wireshark 4.0+ and tshark command-line utility installed
• Root/sudo privileges or membership in the wireshark group for live packet capture
• Network interface access (physical NIC, span port, or network tap) to the monitored segment
• Sufficient disk space for packet capture files (estimate 1 GB per minute on busy gigabit links)
• Familiarity with TCP/IP protocols, HTTP, DNS, TLS, and SMB at the packet level

Workflow

Step 1: Configure Capture Environment

Set up the capture interface and filters to target relevant traffic:

# List available interfaces
tshark -D

# Start capture on eth0 with a capture filter to limit scope
tshark -i eth0 -f "host 10.10.5.23 and (port 80 or port 443 or port 445)" -w /tmp/capture.pcapng

# Capture with ring buffer to manage disk usage (10 files, 100MB each)
tshark -i eth0 -b filesize:102400 -b files:10 -w /tmp/rolling_capture.pcapng

# Capture on multiple interfaces simultaneously
tshark -i eth0 -i eth1 -w /tmp/multi_interface.pcapng

For Wireshark GUI, set capture filter in the Capture Options dialog before starting.

Step 2: Apply Display Filters for Targeted Analysis

# Filter HTTP traffic containing suspicious user agents
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "http.user_agent contains \"curl\" or http.user_agent contains \"Wget\""

# Find DNS queries to suspicious TLDs
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "dns.qry.name contains \".xyz\" or dns.qry.name contains \".top\" or dns.qry.name contains \".tk\""

# Identify TCP retransmissions indicating network issues
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "tcp.analysis.retransmission"

# Filter SMB traffic for lateral movement detection
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "smb2.cmd == 5 or smb2.cmd == 3" -T fields -e ip.src -e ip.dst -e smb2.filename

# Find cleartext credential transmission
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "ftp.request.command == \"PASS\" or http.authbasic"

# Detect beaconing patterns (regular interval connections)
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "ip.dst == 203.0.113.50" -T fields -e frame.time_relative -e ip.src -e tcp.dstport

Step 3: Protocol-Specific Deep Analysis

# Follow a TCP stream to reconstruct a conversation
tshark -r capture.pcapng -q -z follow,tcp,ascii,0

# Analyze HTTP request/response pairs
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "http" -T fields -e frame.time -e ip.src -e ip.dst -e http.request.method -e http.request.uri -e http.response.code

# Extract DNS query/response statistics
tshark -r capture.pcapng -q -z dns,tree

# Analyze TLS handshakes for weak cipher suites
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "tls.handshake.type == 2" -T fields -e ip.src -e ip.dst -e tls.handshake.ciphersuite

# SMB file access enumeration
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "smb2" -T fields -e frame.time -e ip.src -e ip.dst -e smb2.filename -e smb2.cmd

Step 4: Extract Artifacts and IOCs

# Export HTTP objects (files transferred over HTTP)
tshark -r capture.pcapng --export-objects http,/tmp/http_objects/

# Export SMB objects (files transferred over SMB)
tshark -r capture.pcapng --export-objects smb,/tmp/smb_objects/

# Extract all unique destination IPs for threat intelligence lookup
tshark -r capture.pcapng -T fields -e ip.dst | sort -u > unique_dest_ips.txt

# Extract SSL/TLS certificate information
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "tls.handshake.type == 11" -T fields -e x509sat.uTF8String -e x509ce.dNSName

# Extract all URLs accessed
tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y "http.request" -T fields -e http.host -e http.request.uri | sort -u > urls.txt

# Hash extracted files for IOC matching
find /tmp/http_objects/ -type f -exec sha256sum {} \; > extracted_file_hashes.txt

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