This Sniffer FAQ will hopefully give administrators a clear understanding of sniffing problems and hopefully possible solutions to follow up with. Sniffers is one of the main causes of mass break-ins on the Internet today. What a sniffer is and how it works Unlike telephone circuits, computer networks are shared communication channels.
Sharing means that computers can receive information that was intended for other machines.
To capture the information going over the network is called sniffing. Most popular way of connecting computers is through ethernet. Ethernet protocol works by sending packet information to all the hosts on the same circuit. The packet header contains the proper address of the destination machine. Only the machine with the matching address is suppose to accept the packet.