Take care of packets easily

Scapy is a free development program that enables you to manipulate packets with ease. Originally developed by Philippe Biondi, this Python-based tool is an interactive packet manipulation program and library that can handle all kinds of protocols. It has cross-platform capabilities, making it a highly versatile tool for network analysis and security assessment. Unlike other networking tools, this one has a flexible model and allows you to build the exact packets you want.

What is Scapy?

A packet or network packet is a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-switched network, consisting of control information and user data or payload. These data are important despite their sizes, and tools like Scapy help you in handling them all. The tool can do basic actions like forging or decoding them, sending them on the wire, capturing them, storing or reading them using pcap files, and matching requests and replies. 

It can also do scanning, tracerouting, probing, testing units, and discovering networks or attacks. More, compared to other similar tools, it can perform specific tasks, including sending invalid frames and injecting your frames. I can also combine network techniques that other tools would mostly flounder with. The program also comes with a design that allows fast packet prototyping by using default values that work and lets you put any value you want in any field you want.

Due to this versatility, you can pretty much use this tool to replace software, like hping, Nmap, arpspoof, and tcpdump, among others. This program uses the command-line interface function, but it can still interface with several other programs to provide visualization, like Wireshark and Gnuplot, for providing graphs. It also has bindings for multiple programming languages. However, one of its issues is that it can’t handle a large number of packets simultaneously.

A great packet controller

Overall, Scapy is no simple program to operate. It has tons of advantages in the creation and configuration of packets. Add in its active and dedicated community of developers, and this is one highly-recommended software for network professionals. While it can’t easily compete with other programs that can handle bulk packets at the same time, it’s still an easy-to-use software for those who are just starting.