Checking if the transport level encryption works?

Question

It´s possible to use the message tracer with WCF to see if the communication using messages encryption is really encrypted. For more info see point 5 here : here

But If we instead uses transport level encryption will it still worke? Becouse when I check it the data is written in clear text? I Suspect that becouse the encryption is made on the transport level the WCF tracer will show the content and not the encryptet string?

Is there any way to check that the data is encryptet when using Transport level security?

Answer 1

Yes. If you want to be sure the data is encrypted, you can sniff the packets with Wireshark and examine their contents.

Be sure to verify that the data isn't simply encoded, but is actually encrypted. Try decoding it as if it were ascii, ascii-hex, Base64, etc. If it is really encrypted then these decoding attempts will all fail. A great free-as-in-beer decoder is available as part of Burp Suite.