Winsock Scriptable Packet Editor is an application designed in order to allow users to monitor and manipulate network events, network traffic and DNS to and from a target application. By building scripts or choosing to setup custom filtering users can control data before it is sent or received by the target. Its easy to use graphical user interface allows even inexperienced users the ability to debug their solutions with minimal effort.

Any Windows NT based operating system is supported; most of the testing and development is done on Windows 2000 and XP. Any application that makes use of the Windows Socket 2.0 32-bit library (WS2_32.DLL) is an ideal target; this includes WSOCK32.DLL or any other libraries that use either of these core libraries as a dependency. There is currently no plan to support any Windows 9x or older based operating systems. WSPE is not protocol specific and supports both IPv4 and IPv6, recognized protocols include: IP, ICMP, GGP, TCP, PUP, UDP, IDP, ND, RAW, and MAX. Any other protocols will appear as unknown and are still acceptable.

Users are able to launch any binary file with WSPE in order to begin the capturing and filtering of events instantaneously upon execution. Users are also able to seamlessly attach and detach WSPE from any running process at any time without the worry of losing network data, haltering execution, interrupting connections or restarting the process.

The focus audience of this application is client and server developers looking for a quick and easy way to debug their solutions without the hassle of having to recompile code for network changes. With object oriented programming and multiple hierarchies of socket related libraries it is increasingly difficult to keep track of what is actually going on over the network. Keeping the waste of unnecessary network traffic and events to a minimum is the key in keeping professional solutions running fast and stable. The ability to craft and send custom packets will allow you to test the data array checking and make sure your application is secure from malicious overflows. The threat of server security vulnerabilities due to poor coding can be devastating, it is best that developers are made aware of how the problem occurs to help prevent it within the coding process. WSPE will assist in acquiring the proper knowledge on different aspects of network security, network protocols, and core network functionality.

There are two primary components of WSPE. The first being the graphical user interface which was developed in BCB (Borland C++ Builder) and is everything users see and interact with. The second component is a dynamic link library developed in MASM32 (Microsoft Assembler) which does all the behind the scene work. The two remain separate from each other and work together via inter-process communication to make everything possible.