Network Forensics

When to Use

Use when auditing network traffic, investigating incidents, analyzing protocol behavior, or reviewing packet captures from authorized security assessments.

Tool Reference

tcpdump

tshark

editcap

mergecap

ngrep

zeek

suricata

termshark

scapy

netflow

Methodology

1. Capture

# Capture with rotation (100MB files, keep 10)
tcpdump -i eth0 -w capture-%Y%m%d%H%M.pcap -C 100 -W 10 -Z root

# Capture specific traffic
tcpdump -i any 'port 443 and host 10.0.0.1' -w tls_traffic.pcap

# Ring buffer capture (continuous, overwrite oldest)
tcpdump -i eth0 -w ring.pcap -C 50 -W 20

2. Triage

# Protocol hierarchy
tshark -r capture.pcap -qz io,phs

# Conversation summary
tshark -r capture.pcap -qz conv,tcp

# Endpoint statistics
tshark -r capture.pcap -qz endpoints,ip

# HTTP requests overview
tshark -r capture.pcap -Y http.request -T fields \
  -e frame.time -e ip.src -e http.host -e http.request.uri

3. Deep Inspection

# Extract DNS queries
tshark -r capture.pcap -Y dns.qr==0 -T fields \
  -e frame.time -e ip.src -e dns.qry.name -e dns.qry.type

# TLS handshake analysis (SNI, ciphers, JA3)
tshark -r capture.pcap -Y 'tls.handshake.type==1' -T fields \
  -e ip.src -e ip.dst -e tls.handshake.extensions_server_name \
  -e ja3.hash

# Find cleartext credentials
ngrep -q -I capture.pcap 'pass|user|login|auth' 'port 80 or port 21 or port 25'

# Extract files from HTTP streams
tshark -r capture.pcap --export-objects http,exported_files/

4. Anomaly Detection

# DNS tunneling indicators (long queries, high frequency)
tshark -r capture.pcap -Y 'dns.qry.name.len > 50' -T fields \
  -e ip.src -e dns.qry.name | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

# Beaconing detection (regular intervals)
tshark -r capture.pcap -Y 'ip.dst==suspicious.ip' -T fields \
  -e frame.time_epoch | awk '{if(NR>1) print $1-prev; prev=$1}'

# Large outbound transfers (exfiltration)
tshark -r capture.pcap -qz conv,tcp | sort -k8 -rn | head -20

# Non-standard port usage
tshark -r capture.pcap -Y 'tcp.port > 1024 and not ssl' \
  -qz io,stat,60,"COUNT(tcp.port)tcp.port"

5. Zeek Log Analysis

# Process pcap with Zeek
zeek -r capture.pcap local

# Unusual user agents
cat http.log | zeek-cut user_agent | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head

# Long connections (C2 indicators)
cat conn.log | zeek-cut duration id.orig_h id.resp_h id.resp_p | \
  awk '$1 > 3600' | sort -rn

# DNS query frequency per host
cat dns.log | zeek-cut id.orig_h query | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

# File extraction from Zeek
ls extract_files/  # Zeek auto-extracts transferred files

Code Review Patterns

Insecure Protocol Usage

# FINDING: Cleartext protocol in use
# LOOK FOR: socket connections without TLS wrapper
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
sock.connect((host, 80))  # No TLS
sock.send(credentials.encode())  # Cleartext creds on wire

DNS Exfiltration Surface

# FINDING: User-controlled data in DNS queries enables exfiltration
query = f"{user_data}.example.com"  # Data encoded in subdomain
resolver.resolve(query, 'A')

Missing Certificate Validation

# FINDING: TLS verification disabled
requests.get(url, verify=False)  # Accepts any cert
ssl_context = ssl.create_default_context()
ssl_context.check_hostname = False  # MitM possible

Scapy Recipes

from scapy.all import *

# Read and filter pcap
pkts = rdpcap("capture.pcap")
dns_pkts = [p for p in pkts if p.haslayer(DNS)]

# Extract unique destination IPs
dsts = set(p[IP].dst for p in pkts if p.haslayer(IP))

# Reassemble TCP streams
sessions = pkts.sessions()
for session_id, session_pkts in sessions.items():
    payload = b"".join(bytes(p[TCP].payload) for p in session_pkts if p.haslayer(TCP))

Output Format

## Network Forensics Report

### Capture Summary
- **File**: capture.pcap (SIZE, DURATION)
- **Packets**: N total, N protocols
- **Time range**: START — END

### Findings

#### [SEVERITY] Finding Title
- **Evidence**: packet numbers, timestamps
- **Indicator**: what was observed
- **Impact**: security implication
- **Recommendation**: remediation

### IOCs Extracted
| Type | Value | Context |
|------|-------|---------|
| IP | x.x.x.x | C2 server |
| Domain | evil.com | DNS tunnel |
| JA3 | hash | Malware TLS fingerprint |

2600 Heritage

Network packet analysis has been a core 2600 topic since the magazine's founding — from early TCP/IP stack fingerprinting articles to modern TLS interception techniques. The 2600 community pioneered accessible network forensics tools and techniques that are now industry standard.