Posted on Tuesday, May 19 2020 @ 12:38 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Bleeping Computer
pulls attention to the fact that Microsoft added a network packet sniffer to Windows 10 with the release of the October 2018 Update. This feature has gone pretty unnoticed since then, it's a small tool that can be used by administrators to diagnose network issues and see what type programs are used on the network. Furthermore, this sort of software can also be used to snoop on traffic that doesn't use encryption. Called Packet Monitor, this new tool can be used via the command line by executing pktmon. It's a light-weight alternative to Wireshark and Microsoft Network Monitor.
This program has a description of "Monitor internal packet propagation and packet drop reports", which indicates it is designed for diagnosing network problems.
Similar to the Windows 'netsh trace' command, it can be used to perform full packet inspection of data being sent over the computer.
