Wireshark is the newest version of Ethereal

A network packet sniffer is a great tool for investigating network communication error. At the time of writing the book, Ethereal was one of the best tools network packet sniffer available and we used it to analyze the network communication between two different systems. 

However, the last update to Ethereal has been made in April 2006 having the version 0.99.0, that is more than one and a half year ago.  Since then, several vulnerabilities have been discovered in protocol parsers and because Ethereal opens/interprets each packet received by the networking card, it is essential to use a version which is up to date.

Due to trademark related issues, the latest packet sniffer version is offered under Wireshark name, last release being 0.99.6. This release fixes several security holes discovered in the previous releases of Wireshark and Ethereal.

Even if the sample capture files available on the website can be opened safely with the Ethereal, it is strongly advised to upgrade to the latest Wireshark version. This is even more important when the captured packets are not received from trusted servers. Wireshark opens the sample capture files described in the chapter 8 without any problem and provides the same user experience as the Ethereal.