It also inspired an entire generation of hackers - friendly or otherwise - to sniff out unsecured wireless connections (“ wardriving“). And a few years later, when WiFi was being introduced, Ethereal, was put into action by every system administrator trying to fix a buggy WiFi connection. When network engineer Gerald Combsreleased first this code as open source in 1998, he democratized IP packet inspection for everyone. There were packet analyzers prior to Ethereal, of course, though, but they were expensive. A built-in powerful data parsing engine is only half the appeal an extensible design has allowed others to easily provide plug-ins for an endless array of new protocols and data formats. Wireshark provides a glimpse into the traffic going across your network at a packet level, allowing users to understand the system better and diagnosis problems. Today, Wireshark is free and available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. Just in the past five years, it has been downloaded more than 60 million times and has attracted more than 2,000 contributors. The creators call the software the “world’s foremost traffic protocol analyzer” with considerable justification. The Wireshark Foundation will house the Wireshark source code and assets, and manage the SharkFest, Wireshark’s developer and user conference (Singapore April 17-19 and San Diego June 10-15). This month, Sysdig, the current sponsor of Wireshark, launched a new foundation that will serve as the long-term custodian of the project.

This year, the venerable Wireshark has turned 25, and its creators are taking a step back from this massively successful open source project, to let additional parties to help govern.

The experience of using Wireshark is a bit like what Robert Hooke must have felt in 1665 when using the newly-developed microscope to view cells for the first time ever: What was once just an inscrutable package had opened up to reveal a treasure trove of useful information.

No doubt, countless engineers and hackers remember the first time they used Wireshark, or - if they’re a bit older - Wireshark’s predecessor, Ethereal.

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