Trent W. Buck writes "I don't know why tcpdump *wants* to access ethers(5)"
 
Under certain conditions the init_etherarray() function which populates address 
to name tables will read from /etc/ethers in an effort to be more efficient 
than using NIS (via /etc/nsswitch.conf.)

There is a function in tcpdump called "etheraddr_string()" which
constructs a formatted string containing link-level information (i.e.
MAC addresses) which is used in many places in the tcpdump code that
display link-level information.  If data is available that associates
given names to link-level addresses etheraddr_string() can optionally
use that information.  That is where the tables (if any) built by
init_etherarray() are (mostly?) used.

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tcpdump 4.0.0-6ubuntu3 denied read access to ethers(5) by apparmor profile
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/660904
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