Listen Carefully – The Secrets Are in the Traffic

In the digital world, every move leaves a trace. Every time you open a web page, send a message, or click a button, traffic is generated. Packets of information travel across invisible networks, crossing the planet in milliseconds—and if you know how to listen carefully, you can discover much more than it seems.

What is network traffic?

Network traffic is the set of data transmitted between devices over networks (like the Internet). This traffic can include:

• Requests to web pages
• File transfers
• Messages between applications
• Connections between servers and clients

The challenge is to intercept and analyze that traffic. But to do so, you first need a powerful magnifying glass.

Key tools: Wireshark

Wireshark is one of the most powerful protocol analyzers in the world. It allows you to:

• Capture network packets in real time
• Inspect each packet in detail
• Filter and classify content
• Discover patterns or anomalies

With Wireshark, you can literally see how the Internet moves, one line of code at a time.

cURL

On the other hand, curl is a command-line tool that lets you make requests to servers directly from your terminal.

• Want to send an HTTP request? Curl does it.
• Need to save the response or examine headers? Curl does that too.

Both tools together give you the power to send, capture, and understand what happens in a connection.

How does an HTTP request flow?

When you visit a website or make a request to an API, something like this happens:

1. The client (your browser or terminal) sends an HTTP request to the server.
2. The server processes that request and responds with: - Status code (200 OK, 404 Not Found…) - Headers (content type, length, etc.) - And a body with the requested content.

This content can be HTML, JSON, or even plain text with… something interesting.

What if the message is encoded?

Sometimes, the server doesn’t want to give you the message as is, and instead of hiding it completely, decides to encode it. Here’s where the difference between encryption and encoding comes in:

• Encoding: transforms data so it can be transported (like converting text to a machine-readable format).
  It’s reversible if you know the system (e.g., UTF-8, ASCII, Base64).

• Encryption: transforms data to hide it. You need a key to decrypt. (e.g., AES, RSA)

This challenge includes a data transformation, not strong encryption. But even so, it requires you to open your eyes and know how to interpret.

Observer mindset

Beyond the tools, the most important thing is your way of thinking.

• What are you looking for?
• What does a normal packet look like?
• Where is something hiding that shouldn’t be there?
• What patterns repeat?

Learning to read network traffic is like learning to listen to conversations in a noisy room. At first, everything sounds confusing, but with practice, you start to distinguish the voices that matter.

Key concepts you’ll practice

• Traffic interception
• HTTP requests and responses
• Headers and response bodies
• Decoding transmitted data
• Analytical and technical thinking

One step closer to understanding the Internet

These kinds of challenges give you real power—the power to understand how data moves, the power to find secrets where others see nothing, and above all, the power to awaken a critical awareness about the information we send and receive every day.

If you’ve made it this far, don’t stop now. Breathe, observe, analyze… and find what others overlook. Secrets are always traveling across the network. You just need to know how to look.