Before Wireshark, originally called Ethereal, packet sniffing was largely the domain of command line tools like tcpdump. Released in 1988, tcpdump gave users a raw, text based way to inspect network traffic. It was powerful, but also opaque and hard to master, especially for newcomers. You had to know exactly what you were looking for, and interpreting the data meant sifting through walls of cryptic output.
Then came Wireshark.
It brought a graphical interface to the world of packet analysis and made deep network inspection far more accessible. Users could visually follow TCP streams, filter by protocol, decode packets in real time, and dissect application level data with ease. Wireshark didn't just make packet sniffing easier, it changed how people learned networking and security. Today it is one of the most widely used tools for education, ethical hacking, malware analysis, and protocol development.
From dorm rooms to data centers, Wireshark made network hacking look good and work better.
#Wireshark #tcpdump #PacketSniffing #NetworkSecurity #InfosecTools #HackingHistory #FOSS
