On an unencrypted public wi-fi hotspot, what exactly is a packet sniffer doing to get another computer's packet?

Posted by hal10001 on Super User See other posts from Super User or by hal10001
Published on 2011-06-23T15:08:40Z Indexed on 2011/06/23 16:25 UTC
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I get mixed results when reading information security articles, some of them stating that in order to do something similar you need to also setup some sort of honeypot with a running access point and local Web server to intercept traffic. Then other articles seem to indicate you don't need that, and you can just run Wireshark, and it will detect all packets being sent on the network. How could that be, and what exactly is a packet sniffer doing to get those packets? Does this involve intercepting wireless signals transmitted over the wireless protocol and frequency via the NIC on the computer running a program like Wireshark?

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