An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) has alerted the network administrator to a possibly malicious sequence of packets sent to a Web server in the network's external DMZ. The packet traffic was…

A protocol analyzer, such as Wireshark, is designed to deeply inspect and interpret the contents of network packets, including those saved in a PCAP file. It allows an administrator to examine packet headers, payloads, and protocol behavior to determine if the traffic flagged by an IDS is genuinely malicious or a false positive by understanding the communication details.

A network sniffer is primarily used to *capture* network traffic into files like PCAP. While some sniffers have basic analysis capabilities, the term "protocol analyzer" more accurately describes the in-depth inspection and interpretation of captured data to determine maliciousness.

An Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) actively blocks or prevents malicious traffic in real-time based on rules, and while it logs events, its primary function is not the post-hoc, manual analysis of PCAP files to distinguish false positives.

A vulnerability scanner assesses systems for known weaknesses and misconfigurations, but it does not analyze captured network traffic (PCAP files) to identify malicious activity or false positives.