A possibly malicious sequence of packets that were sent to a web server has been captured by an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and was saved to a PCAP file. As a network administrator, you need to…

An Intrusion Prevention System operates inline on live network traffic to block threats in real time and cannot open or analyze an already-saved PCAP file.

A vulnerability scanner probes live systems or applications for known security weaknesses and has no capability to read or interpret network packet capture files.

A protocol analyzer such as Wireshark can open PCAP files and decode each protocol layer of the captured packets, enabling an administrator to inspect payloads, headers, and traffic patterns for signs of malicious activity. This forensic capability is purpose-built for offline analysis of saved packet captures and is the standard tool used in this scenario.

A network sniffer captures traffic from the wire in real time; while it can produce PCAP files, it is not the forensic analysis tool used to examine and decode previously captured data.