NetworkMiner vs Scapy

NetworkMiner analyzes captured network traffic and can sniff live traffic, extracting artifacts such as files, images, emails, and passwords from PCAP files. It also builds a host inventory from IP address information for passive asset discovery and communication overviews. The free edition supports live sniffing and PCAP and ETL parsing on Windows and Linux, but not PcapNG parsing. Professional accepts PcapNG, Pcap-over-IP, and PacketCache data in addition to PCAP, ETL, and live sniffing, and exports results to CSV, JSON-LD, and XML. Its protocol features include file extraction across listed protocols, while VoIP support includes audio extraction from unencrypted calls. Professional also provides OSINT lookups for hashes, IP addresses, domains, and URLs. NetworkMiner does not decrypt HTTPS or other TLS-encrypted sessions. Extracted data stays on the end-user device rather than in the cloud. The source code is GPLv2 free and open source. Netresec warns that opening PCAPs can automatically extract malware and recommends Linux or Windows Sandbox to reduce self-infection risk.

Scapy is a free Python packet manipulation program and library for forging or decoding packets, sending and capturing them, and matching requests with replies. It can run as an interactive shell or be used as a library. Listed tasks include scanning, tracerouting, probing, unit tests, attacks and network discovery. Users can set arbitrary field values and stack protocol layers rather than rely on predetermined templates; after a probe, Scapy returns full decoded packets before interpretation for further analysis. It can read and store pcap files, inject invalid frames and custom 802.11 frames, and be extended with protocols and add-ons. Scapy runs on Linux, macOS, BSD and Windows, though Windows installation requires Npcap. Optional plotting needs Matplotlib; TLS decryption and PKI operations need the cryptography package. The code, tests and tools use GPL v2, while the documentation uses CC BY-NC-SA 2.5. Documentation includes installation instructions, usage guides, troubleshooting and an API reference. The project supports only its latest master version, and critical bugs should be reported privately through GitHub’s security tab.