Analyzing pcap with Wireshark

An organization has hired a security analyst to perform a penetration test.

The analyst captures 1Gb worth of inbound network traffic to the server and transfers the pcap back to the machine for analysis.

Which of the following tools should the analyst use to further review the pcap?

A.

Nmap

B.

cURL

C.

Netcat

D.

Wireshark.

D.

The tool that the security analyst should use to further review the pcap (packet capture) is Wireshark (option D).

Wireshark is a widely-used network protocol analyzer that allows the user to capture and view network traffic in real-time or from saved capture files. It is commonly used in network security assessments to analyze traffic and identify potential security threats.

In this scenario, the security analyst has already captured 1Gb worth of inbound network traffic to the server and saved it in a pcap file. The next step would be to review the contents of the pcap file to identify any potential vulnerabilities or attacks.

Wireshark would allow the analyst to analyze the captured traffic in detail, filter out irrelevant packets, and view the contents of the packets. The tool also provides various statistical and graphical analysis features to help identify patterns or anomalies in the traffic.

The other options listed are not suitable for analyzing a pcap file. Nmap (option A) is a network exploration and port scanning tool. cURL (option B) is a command-line tool for transferring data over various protocols. Netcat (option C) is a network utility tool that can be used for various purposes such as port scanning, banner grabbing, and data transfer. However, none of these tools are designed for analyzing a pcap file.