Master Wireshark tool Like a Pro: – The Ultimate Packet Analysis Guide for Real-World Analysts

Thanks for stopping by! I know you’ve probably come across tons of Wireshark articles already, but trust me—this one’s different. I’ve kept it real, practical, and straight from an investigator perspective. Give it a read, and you’ll see exactly what I mean. 🦈

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Hey folks 👋 Dean here!

So, if you’re diving into packet analysis or network forensics, you will spend a LOT of time inside Wireshark — that’s just a fact. This article is all about getting comfortable with Wireshark’s GUI and some key features that make your job easier and your analysis sharper.

Wireshark’s Interface – Know Your Panes

When you open Wireshark, the interface is split into three main sections (panes), and each plays a unique role:

1. Packet List Pane

This is your bird’s-eye view. Each row is a packet. By default, you'll see columns like:

• Time – Time since the start of the capture (can be changed to UTC/human-readable format).

• Source/Destination IPs

• Protocol

• Info – A quick summary, which is super helpful when scanning for suspicious behavior.

  
  

You can fully customize this view: add, remove, or reorder columns. For instance, if you want to add http.user_agent, you can do that – empty for non-HTTP packets, of course.

2. Packet Details Pane

Now we get to the fun part — protocol decoding!

Here you’ll see the packet broken down by layers:

• Ethernet → IP → TCP/UDP → Application layer data

• Each section is clickable and expandable.

This pane is gold when you're analyzing weird or unfamiliar protocols because Wireshark does the heavy lifting and shows human-readable names and field values.

3. Packet Bytes Pane

This is your raw hex + ASCII view.

It may feel intimidating at first, but trust me — this view is powerful. You can click on a byte here and it will highlight the corresponding field in the Packet Details pane (and vice versa).

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Smart Display Filters – Your Best Friend in Big PCAPs

When you’re staring at thousands of packets, Display Filters are a lifesaver.

You’ll find the Display Filter Toolbar at the top. You can type stuff like:

• http

• ip.addr == 192.168.1.1

• tcp.port == 443

These don’t just make your life easier — they help you zoom into what's important without the noise.

Down at the bottom, the Status Bar tells you:

• Total packets

• Packets matching your current filter

• Field names and byte sizes for whatever you’re hovering over

  
  

Super useful when building precise filters or understanding payload size.

Layout Customization – Looks Can Boost Productivity

Wireshark lets you change the pane layout! 🧱

This might sound cosmetic, but if you’re working on a small screen, a widescreen monitor, or presenting on a projector, tweaking the layout can hugely improve usability. Choose from six layouts and decide what each pane shows. Try it. It helps.

Let’s Talk OPSEC – DNS Lookups and What NOT to Do

By default, Wireshark disables DNS lookups. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.

Here’s why:

• Performing live DNS lookups for every IP in a capture slows everything down.

• Worse: If you're analyzing malware traffic, querying attacker infrastructure can tip them off that you’re onto them.

Never turn on “Use an external network name resolver” if you care about stealth. Trust me — adversaries do monitor their DNS logs.

Instead, use:

“Use captured DNS packet data for address resolution”This resolves hostnames from the DNS packets in the capture — no external traffic.

Timestamp Formats – Pick What Works for You

Wireshark gives multiple time format options:

• Seconds since capture start (default)

• UTC (recommended)

• Local time

• With or without microsecond precision

You can change this from the View > Time Display Format menu.

⚠️ Keep in mind:Timestamps in the packet metadata (in the pcap) are in UTC. But any timestamps inside the packet data (like HTTP headers or app logs) can be in any timezone. So don’t mix them up.

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🔧 More Tips for Better Investigations

• Add your own custom columns! Need to see dns.qry.name in the top view? You can add it.

• Use color rules to highlight suspicious traffic. E.g., make HTTP POSTs Green.

• Save your profiles – layout, filters, colors – for different use cases (malware, exfil, RDP analysis, etc.)

  
  

HOW TO CREATE A PROFILE IN WIRESHARK

1. Open Wireshark

2. Go to Edit > Configuration Profiles

3. Click New and give it a name (e.g., MalwareAnalysis)

4. Select it, then click OK

5. This activates the profile—you’ll now be customizing this one

   
   

Lets give you an example:

1. MALWARE ANALYSIS PROFILE

Columns to Add

• frame.number

• ip.src

• ip.dst

• tcp.stream

• http.request.method

• http.host

• http.request.uri

• dns.qry.name

• tcp.len

Coloring Rules

Filter	Description	BG Color
http.request.method == "POST"	Suspicious POSTs	Red
dns.qry.name contains ".xyz"	TOR Domain	Purple
tcp.port == 4444	C2 Comms	Dark Red
udp contains "powershell"	Obfuscated Payloads	Orange

Output:

Note: If I receive any requests, I’ll publish a follow-up article sharing a few ready-made profiles that can assist in deeper analysis. However, if you're only interested in learning how to create a profile, the information in this article should be sufficient.

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Lets talk about Display Filters

Imagine we’re staring at a huge PCAP file — like, thousands of packets — and we need to find just the suspicious HTTP request or that DNS reply pointing to a shady domain. Manually clicking through each packet? Nope. That’s where Wireshark Display Filters come in. And trust me, once you get the hang of them, they’ll become your best friend in traffic analysis.

First, What Are Display Filters?

Wireshark is already super powerful with its decoders and GUI, but display filters make it even better. Basically, display filters allow you to tell Wireshark:

"Hey, show me only the packets that match this very specific condition."

And here’s the kicker — any field Wireshark can decode can also be filtered. Whether it’s an IP address, port number, DNS name, cookie value, or even the number of DNS answers — if it’s in the packet and Wireshark can read it, you can filter it.

Display Filter vs Capture Filter (BPF)

You may be wondering — "Wait, isn’t that what capture filters do?"

Great question.

🟢 Capture Filters (BPF) work before the packets are even captured — they sit close to the kernel, fast and efficient.

🟡 Display Filters work after the capture — they analyze the decoded traffic and give you crazy granularity.

So if you're capturing live and only want HTTP port 80 traffic:

tcp port 80

(That’s a capture filter, BPF-style.)

But once the PCAP is saved, and you want to find HTTP packets with the word "hack" in them, that’s when display filters shine:

http contains "hack"

Real-Life Examples You’ll Actually Use

Let’s look at some cool and practical filters you’ll definitely end up using:

1. Find non-standard HTTP traffic containing specific text

(not tcp.port == 80 and not tcp.port == 8080) and http contains "hack"

2. DNS replies with more than 5 answers (maybe shady as hell)

dns.flags.response == 1 and dns.count.answers > 5 and dns.qry.name contains "drive.io"

3. Case-insensitive matching (thanks to RegEx!)

http.cookie matches "(?i)dean"

4. OR multiple status codes like a pro

http.response.code in {200 301 302 404}

Finding Field Names for Filters

One of the most common questions is:

"How do I even know what field name to use?"

Here’s the trick:

Right-click any field in the Packet Details pane (middle pane), and you’ll see:

• ✅ Apply as Filter — applies the filter instantly

• 📝 Prepare a Filter — lets you tweak the filter before running it

Let’s say you’ve got a DNS query for www.cyberengage.org, and you want to filter only those. Wireshark shows the field name as:

dns.qry.name == "www.cyberengage.org"

That’s it. GUI does half the work for you!

The Stoplight System (Green, Yellow, Red)

Wireshark helps with syntax too. You’ll see the filter bar change colors:

• 🟩 Green – valid syntax, ready to go.

• 🟥 Red – error in field name or syntax (like missing quotes).

• 🟨 Yellow – valid syntax, but potential logical issues (like using != in the wrong way)

  
  

Let’s Talk About !=

Here’s where things get tricky — the != operator might not behave like you’d expect. Say you write:

dns.a != 192.168.1.1

Wireshark may still include packets with that IP. Why? Because that same packet also had a different dns.a value.

So the better filter would be:

dns.a && !(dns.a == 192.168.1.1)

This means: "Show me packets that have any dns.a field, but NOT if any of those are 192.168.1.1."

Tricky, right? But powerful once you get it.

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Lets talk about TCP Stream

What Is “Follow TCP Stream” and Why It’s Gold

Let’s start with the basics. Imagine you’re deep inside a pcap file, and you're tracking an IP address that might be talking to a shady server. You click on a suspicious packet, right-click it, and boom — there’s this magical option: “Follow → TCP Stream.”

What this does is extract the entire conversation (client-to-server and server-to-client) into a single readable view. It’s color-coded too:

• 🔴 Red = client → server

• 🔵 Blue = server → client

It’s super helpful, especially for ASCII-based protocols like HTTP, FTP, SMTP, or even Telnet. You can literally read full login attempts, commands, and responses like reading a chat transcript.

A Pro Tip

There’s a dropdown labeled “Entire Conversation.” You can use that to focus on just one side of the traffic — really helpful when the streams get noisy or tangled.

Not Just TCP

Wireshark lets you follow UDP, TLS, and HTTP streams too. This is great for protocols that don’t rely on TCP’s session-based structure.

Beyond the Basics: Must-Know Features in Wireshark

Wireshark is a beast — no other way to put it.

Decode As Alternate Protocol

Sometimes threat actors do shady things like running HTTP traffic over random ports (say, port 9999). Wireshark might misinterpret the protocol. With Decode As, you can force Wireshark to analyze the traffic using the protocol you know is actually being used.

Traffic Capture Tips

Wireshark can both capture and analyze traffic. But beware — the GUI adds processing overhead, and you might drop packets if you’re capturing high-volume traffic.

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Final Thoughts

In real-world cases, these tools help you go from “what’s going on?” to “here’s exactly what happened”—faster and with more confidence.

Don’t be afraid to explore, experiment, and get your hands dirty. The more comfortable you get with these tools, the more powerful and efficient your analysis becomes. Keep digging, keep questioning, and most importantly, keep learning. You’re not just reading packets—you’re uncovering stories hidden deep in the network.

Thanks again for reading. I hope this walkthrough gave you something valuable—something practical you can carry into your next case or lab session.

Happy hunting! (https://wiki.wireshark.org/)

----------------------------------------Dean--------------------------------------------