A company has contracted with a network security firm to help identify the vulnerabilities of the corporate network. The firm sends a team to perform penetration tests to the company network. Why would the team use packet sniffers?
- to detect installed tools within files and directories that provide threat actors remote access and control over a computer or network
- to detect any evidence of a hack or malware in a computer or network
- to probe and test the robustness of a firewall by using specially created forged packets
- to capture and analyze packets within traditional Ethernet LANs or WLANs
Explanation: Packet sniffers are specialized tools used by security professionals to capture, monitor, and analyze network data exchanges in real-time. These tools, such as Wireshark or Tcpdump, allow a penetration testing team to decode various protocol layers within recorded frames to identify potential security gaps or unencrypted sensitive information. While they provide a full view of the data inside a packet, they are primarily designed for capturing traffic rather than active tasks like probing firewalls with forged packets or reverse engineering binary files.
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