05/23 - Sniffer - NetworkMiner 1-0

NetworkMiner is a Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT) for Windows. NetworkMiner can be used as a passive network sniffer/packet capturing tool in order to detect operating systems, sessions, hostnames, open ports etc. without putting any traffic on the network. NetworkMiner can also parse PCAP files for off-line analysis and to regenerate/reassemble/rebuild transmitted files, directory structures and certificates from PCAP files.

The purpose of NetworkMiner is to collect data (such as forensic evidence) about hosts on the network rather than to collect data regarding the traffic on the network. The main view is host centric (information grouped per host) rather than packet centric (information showed as a list of packets/frames). NetworkMiner also comes in very handy when analyzing malware traffic, such as C&C (command-and-control) traffic from a BotNet, since uploaded and downloaded files are extracted to disk.

NetworkMiner performs OS fingerprinting based on TCP SYN and SYN+ACK packet by using OS fingerprinting databases from p0f (by Michal Zalewski) and Ettercap (by Alberto Ornaghi and Marco Valleri). NetworkMiner can also perform OS fingerprinting based on DHCP packets (which usually are broadcast packets) by making use of the Satori (by Eric Kollmann) OS fingerprinting database from FingerBank. NetworkMiner also uses the MAC-vendor list from Nmap (by Fyodor).

NetworkMiner can extract files and certificates transferred over the network by parsing a PCAP file or by sniffing traffic directly from the network. This is a neat function that can be used to extract and save media files (such as audio or video files) which are streamed across a network. Supported protocols for file extraction are FTP, HTTP and SMB.

User credentials (usernames and passwords) for supported protocols are extracted by NetworkMiner and displayed under the 'Credentials' tab. Please be considerate when displaying the contents of this tab to the public.

Another very useful feature is that the user can search sniffed or stored data for keywords. NetworkMiner allows the user to insert arbitrary string or byte-patterns that shall be searched for with the keyword search functionality.

Version 0.84 (and newer) of NetworkMiner support sniffing and parsing of WLAN (IEEE 802.11) traffic. NetworkMiner does however currently only support WiFi sniffing with AirPcap adapters.

A feature which is planned to be included in future versions of NetworkMiner is to use statistical methods to do protocol identification and protocol fingerprinting of a TCP session or UDP data. This means that instead of looking at the port number to guess which protocol is used on top of the TCP/UDP packet NetworkMiner will identify the correct protocol based on the TCP/UDP packet content. This way NetworkMiner will be able to identify protocols even if the service is run on a non-standard port. Richard Bejtlich calls this type of functionality 'Port Independent Protocol Identification' (PIPI).

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