Despite the new title, Wireshark & Ethereal Protocol Analyzer Toolkit (WEPAT) is a second edition of Ethereal Packet Sniffing (EPS). I reviewed that book almost three years ago, in May 2004. WEPAT has replaced all of the earlier screen captures with Wireshark replacements. Unfortunately, WEPAT is largely a repeat of EPS, really only featuring a new wireless chapter. If you own EPS, you don't need to upgrade. 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. I used the advice for displaying top destinations to help me better understand traffic distribution in an unfamiliar network. I also liked the new wireless section, Ch 6, especially the coverage of protocols. The tip that packet details could be launched in a new window via View -> Show Packet in New Window was also cool. I liked the regex summary in Ch 5. 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. First, WEPAT includes updates to nearly all chapters. In adding material, however, the authors ended up repeating certain topics all over the place. 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. Ch 2 repeats many of the same concepts from Ch 1, like protection against sniffers and other sniffing tools. Small tools packaged with Wireshark like Tshark, Editcap, Mergecap, and Text2pcap are covered in Ch 2 and Ch 9. There is no need for all this redundancy.



The second disappointment in WEPAT is the inclusion of really old material. SubSeven, last updated four years ago, is called "one of the most common Windows backdoor trojans" (p 377). NetBus (last active in 1999), BackOrifice (2000), T0rn (2000), and Rst.b (2002) are other outdated programs mentioned in WEPAT. Ch 7 uses SQL Slammer (2003), Code Red (2001) and Ramen (2001) as examples of malware for analysis. 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. I am not a Wireshark ninja, but I didn't see much in WEPAT that differed from EPS. 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. That is a really powerful technique that was mentioned only in passing on p 177. 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. If you have EPS, you've already got all the relevant information you need in WEPAT. In fact, the wireless sniffing coverage in 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Ed by Matthew Gast is better. Add that to EPS and then wait to see wait to see what a third edition Syngress Wireshark book looks like.

Despite the new title, Wireshark & Ethereal Protocol Analyzer Toolkit (WEPAT) is a second edition of Ethereal Packet Sniffing (EPS). I reviewed that book almost three years ago, in May 2004. WEPAT has replaced all of the earlier screen captures with Wireshark replacements. Unfortunately, WEPAT is largely a repeat of EPS, really only featuring a new wireless chapter. If you own EPS, you don't need to upgrade. 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. I used the advice for displaying top destinations to help me better understand traffic distribution in an unfamiliar network. I also liked the new wireless section, Ch 6, especially the coverage of protocols. The tip that packet details could be launched in a new window via View -> Show Packet in New Window was also cool. I liked the regex summary in Ch 5. 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. First, WEPAT includes updates to nearly all chapters. In adding material, however, the authors ended up repeating certain topics all over the place. 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. Ch 2 repeats many of the same concepts from Ch 1, like protection against sniffers and other sniffing tools. Small tools packaged with Wireshark like Tshark, Editcap, Mergecap, and Text2pcap are covered in Ch 2 and Ch 9. There is no need for all this redundancy.

The second disappointment in WEPAT is the inclusion of really old material. SubSeven, last updated four years ago, is called "one of the most common Windows backdoor trojans" (p 377). NetBus (last active in 1999), BackOrifice (2000), T0rn (2000), and Rst.b (2002) are other outdated programs mentioned in WEPAT. Ch 7 uses SQL Slammer (2003), Code Red (2001) and Ramen (2001) as examples of malware for analysis. 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. I am not a Wireshark ninja, but I didn't see much in WEPAT that differed from EPS. 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. That is a really powerful technique that was mentioned only in passing on p 177. 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. If you have EPS, you've already got all the relevant information you need in WEPAT. In fact, the wireless sniffing coverage in 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Ed by Matthew Gast is better. Add that to EPS and then wait to see wait to see what a third edition Syngress Wireshark book looks like.

For the most part this book is an updated version of Ethereal Packet Sniffing. 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. That said, it's an improvement over Ethereal Packet Sniffing with some new material and some reorganization.

Chapter 1 is an intro to network analysis, specifically with packet sniffing. 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. The chapter is reasonably comprehensive and accurate.

Chapter 2 introduces Wireshark and how to begin using it. This chapter is very short given what it says it will cover, but most of that is brought up in the following chapters. 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). 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.

Chapter 3 covers getting and installing Wireshark for Windows, Linux, OS X, and how to build it from source. It also covers packet capture drivers (ie on Windows). A very straightforward, direct chapter.

Using Wireshark is the next chapter, and this is where we start the meat of the book. It's about 80 pages long and covers the UI and the command line options. 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. This chapter covers the uncommon graphing and stats sections, and also following streams.

Filters are covered in Chapter 5, and the PCAP and Wireshark filter languages are covered. These are rich languages that allow for complex selectivity, and the chapter is clear and pretty comprehensive.

A new topic is introduced in Chapter 6, specifically wireless sniffing. This is a good addition to the book, and even topics such as decoding EAP and WEP are covered. This is a good, concise overview of the topic of sniffing wireless networks.

Real world packet captures are covered in Chapter 7, which is sadly too short (it could easily be a whole book). Several representative traces are included on the CD ROM that are good to study and review in this chapter. They include Linux worms and Windows malware, and also some coverage of active response packets is given.

Just like the corresponding chapter in Ethereal Packet Sniffing, Chapter 8 covers developing plugins for Wireshark, specifically new protocol decodes. Because Wireshark has a framework to extend, it supports dozens of application and network layer protocols. You can add your favorite new protocol with ease if you follow this chapter. Who knows, you may even get it included. This is a real gem of the book.

Finally, Chapter 9 covers many of the auxiliary programs that are included with Wireshark. These programs let you manage packet traces and marge them or cut them down to size. These are useful even outside of Wireshark if you work with packet traces at all.

This book is a good update to the Ethereal Packet Sniffing book and material. 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. 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.