Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Shodan VS Wireshark

Compare Shodan VS Wireshark and see what are their differences

Shodan logo Shodan

Shodan is the world's first search engine for Internet-connected devices.

Wireshark logo Wireshark

Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.
  • Shodan Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-16
  • Wireshark Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-11

Shodan features and specs

  • Comprehensive Data Collection
    Shodan extensively scans the internet, collecting data from a wide range of devices and services, which provides users with a thorough overview of their network exposure.
  • Security Awareness
    It helps organizations identify and address security vulnerabilities by revealing exposed devices and services that might otherwise go unnoticed.
  • Automation Capabilities
    The platform offers an API that allows users to automate searches and integrate Shodan data into their own tools and workflows.
  • Detailed Search Filters
    Shodan provides advanced search filters that allow users to narrow down results based on specific criteria such as geographic location, device type, or operating system.
  • Real-Time Monitoring
    Users can set up real-time alerts to monitor for new exposures, ensuring timely response to potential threats.

Possible disadvantages of Shodan

  • Ethical and Legal Concerns
    Shodan can be used by malicious actors to identify and exploit vulnerabilities, raising ethical and legal questions about its use and data collection practices.
  • Complex UI
    The user interface can be overwhelming for beginners due to its complexity and the vast amount of data available, making it difficult to navigate without prior experience.
  • Subscription Costs
    While Shodan offers a free tier, accessing advanced features and extensive search capabilities requires a subscription, which might be costly for some users.
  • Potential for False Positives
    The data collected by Shodan might include false positives, where benign devices are flagged as vulnerabilities, thus requiring users to manually verify each finding.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Since Shodan indexes devices connected to the internet, this can include personal and residential hardware, leading to privacy concerns for individuals whose devices are inadvertently exposed.

Wireshark features and specs

  • Comprehensive Protocol Support
    Wireshark supports a vast number of protocols out of the box, allowing for detailed inspection and analysis of network traffic.
  • Free and Open-Source
    Wireshark is free to use and its source code is openly available, enabling customization and community-driven improvements.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Wireshark runs on various operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it accessible to a wide audience.
  • Rich Feature Set
    It offers features like live capture, offline analysis, deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, and powerful display filters for granular traffic analysis.
  • Strong Community Support
    A large and active community provides extensive documentation, tutorials, and support forums, making it easier for users to troubleshoot and learn.

Possible disadvantages of Wireshark

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive feature set and technical nature, Wireshark can be challenging for beginners to master.
  • Resource Intensive
    Live traffic capture and analysis can consume considerable system resources, which may affect performance, especially on less powerful machines.
  • Security Risks
    Running packet capture tools like Wireshark on production systems carries inherent security risks, as it could potentially expose sensitive data.
  • Interface Complexity
    The user interface, while powerful, can be overwhelming and non-intuitive for new users, making navigation and finding specific features difficult.
  • Limited Support for Encrypted Traffic
    Wireshark has limited capabilities when it comes to analyzing encrypted traffic, as decryption support requires additional setup and access to encryption keys.

Shodan videos

Searching the Internet with Shodan (Seen in Mr. Robot)

More videos:

  • Review - Bestech Shodan Unboxing & First Impressions
  • Review - Bestech Shodan FULL Review

Wireshark videos

Wireshark Tutorial for Beginners

More videos:

  • Review - Monitor Network Traffic with Wireshark - Review
  • Review - Wireshark 101: CloudShark Review - HakTip 144

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Shodan and Wireshark)
Security
65 65%
35% 35
Monitoring Tools
28 28%
72% 72
Log Management
0 0%
100% 100
Web Application Security
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Shodan and Wireshark

Shodan Reviews

We have no reviews of Shodan yet.
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Wireshark Reviews

9 Best Angry IP Scanner Alternatives Reviewed 2021 (Free & Paid)
The beauty in Wireshark is that your network scans can be as broad or as granular as you make them. With a few clicks, you can begin capturing a snapshot of all packet traffic across your local area network. It can be overwhelming at first to see every single packet across a network, but Wireshark makes isolating specific events simple with its color coding and filtering...
10 Best WireShark Alternatives for Android Devices in 2021
If you are well enough into network communication, you must know about WireShark. WireShark is the most popular network analyzer for PC. You can use WireShark to see anything on your network that’s not encrypted. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an Android app, however, you can still track, monitor, or capture network packets on your Android devices using our best list of...
Source: techreen.com
11 Best Wireshark Alternatives in 2020
Wireshark is a widely used network monitoring and WiFi troubleshooting tool. However, with Wireshark tool is that you can only gather information from the network but cannot send this information.
Source: www.guru99.com
5 Best Wireshark alternative packet sniffers
Wireshark & Alternative tools FAQs ⭐Can Wireshark do deep packet inspection or do I need something else?⭐Is Wireshark a vulnerability scanner?⭐Is Wireshark good at port scanning?⭐Which tool is a command line alternative to Wireshark?
Comparing Charles Proxy, Fiddler, Wireshark, and Requestly
Although thousands of developers around the globe use Wireshark and Charles Proxy, they fail to occupy the top side in the design aspect. Wireshark’s interface is robust and detailed but can be intimidating for beginners. While Charles Proxy has a more approachable interface compared to Wireshark, it might seem cluttered to some users. Fiddler’s UI is information-rich and...
Source: dev.to

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Shodan should be more popular than Wireshark. It has been mentiond 92 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Shodan mentions (92)

  • Introducing OSINT Template Engine: An open source OSINT Tool.
    Transform OSINT sources such as shodan, bgpview & urlscan into templates which you can use to query & store any and each of the API endpoints they provide. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Some outgoing ports (e.g, port 22) are blocked
    I'm a little surprised you're asking this but as you don't know - if you set the rulebase correctly, you won't get hammered by "public". A lot of people (of course not people here) don't do that which is why shodan.io is full of servers with SSH exposed to the world. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Does anyone want to vet this job opportunity?
    Eh, request a full demo before signing anything. If they make you buy before you can try, move on. Just be advised that data they collect from your site may be used in a database that puts a target on your back. Similar to how shodan.io works. I would probe them on how they handle customer data and if data is shared, partitioned, or isolated to ensure safety from a platform leak. They want to be a security... Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Security issue or coincidence?
    My network is being hit by China and Russia many times per hour. Make sure your firewall is up-to-date and not have any services available on the Internet (WAN). Look at shodan.io which shows you _everything_ is searched on the Internet. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Onion sites crawling: Weird mass "HTTP/1.1 200 " HTTP status line returning?
    In the cases of nginx or apache, I suspect they may be acting as proxies to some backend that also chooses not to send a reason phrase back. Searching for "Reason Phrase" yields a number of bug reports/frameworks that may omit it, and shodan.io shows apache tomcat and a few other services/software that omit the code as well. Source: almost 2 years ago
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Wireshark mentions (11)

  • Wifi problematic, wired connections seem okay. Help?
    Https://wireshark.org, opening that, go to edit preferences and enable "IP network" in the name resolution area, to show website names instead of only IP addresses. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Eeros in bridge mode with wired home
    To prove this, download wireshark Https://wireshark.org/. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Lose internet when downloading large files
    Give that a try and I'll re-recommend for a second time, to run and watch Wireshark: Https://wireshark.org. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Performance scores for Google Lighthouse/Insights seem to be very inaccurate
    Https://www.gap.com/ returned a performance score of 10/100, with a time to interactive score of 36.1 seconds! Https://www.patreon.com/ returned a score of 18 Https://wireshark.org/ returned a score of 28, with "unused javascript" taking 14.9 seconds to load. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Is there a way to programatically turn off Downtime on a child device?
    I tried using Wireshark to figure out which URL is being called but my knowledge here is VERY limited and I couldn’t figure it out. Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Shodan and Wireshark, you can also consider the following products

Intruder - Intruder is a security monitoring platform for internet-facing systems.

Zabbix - Track, record, alert and visualize performance and availability of IT resources

Nessus - Nessus Professional is a security platform designed for businesses who want to protect the security of themselves, their clients, and their customers.

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

Acunetix - Audit your website security and web applications for SQL injection, Cross site scripting and other...

SolarWinds NPM - Advanced network monitoring for on-premises, hybrid, and cloud. Download a FREE 30-day trial of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) today!