It’s far more secure to run Wireshark with a regular user account. Best security practices advise that as little code as possible should run with elevated privileges-especially when its operating at such a low level. Wireshark contains over 2 million lines of complicated code, and it interacts with your computer at the lowest level.

However, installing Wireshark so that only those with root privileges can use it means all its components will run with elevated permissions.

You might not want everyone to be able to see what’s happening on the network. Saying no to this might be an attractive idea. When you install Wireshark, you’re asked whether anyone using a non-root account should be able to capture network traces. If you don’t understand how filters work in Wireshark, you’ll never get out of first gear and throttle the capabilities of the software. There are subtleties to their syntax that make it easy to write a filter and get a result that doesn’t meet your expectations. Wireshark’s filtering capabilities are second to none, with great flexibility and resolving power. You’re able to inspect any packet in the tiniest detail, map out network “conversations” between devices, and use filters to include (or exclude) packets from your analysis. When the capture is complete the trace can be stepped through, packet by packet.

Wireshark filter http requests