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Tag: sniffing

Network traffic sniffing: tcpdump on Linux + Wireshark on Windows

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

From the Windows box using the CLI console (cmd):

ssh USER@HOST "tcpdump -s 0 -U -n -w - -i NETIF FILTER" | "c:\Program Files\Wireshark\Wireshark.exe" -k -i -

# USER - remote user of the linux box
# HOST - host address of the remote linux box
# NETIF - network interface to snif in the remote linux box
# FILTER - (optional) rules for filtering traffic to capture

Use case:

C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH>ssh root@192.168.4.74 "tcpdump -s 0 -U -n -w - -i eno2 udp and not port 53" | "c:\Program Files\Wireshark\Wireshark.exe" -k -i -

Let me present a rare use case of this useful trick. I use a QNAP NAS as a gateway in my home network, where I have 5 NICs. So it’s really useful to snif traffic remotly but I have no tcpdump packet in the system. What I did is use tcpdump as Docker container and finally the commands is like that.

# sniffing SIP traffic (port 5060) on interface eth0
# remote linux host (QNAP NAS) use SSH port 55222
# docker container is created and when work is done is removed
C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH>ssh -p 55222 admin@10.2.0.1 "cd /share/Container/tcpdump && docker run --rm --net=host corfr/tcpdump -s 0 -U -n -w - -i eth0 not port 22 and port 5060" | "c:\Program Files\Wireshark\Wireshark.exe" -k -i -

Sniffing on Mikrotik and streaming in real-time to Wireshark

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

When you have a Mikrotik in any point of your network and you want to launch a sniffer for debugging or troubleshooting, a part from original RouterOS tools, you can stream captured traffic in real-time to Wireshark and inspect packets there.

The idea is exactly the same like I explained on the entry: Sniffing traffic in a Linux box and streaming in real-time to Wireshark on Windows.

Mikrotik configuration using the web interface is like that:

mikrotik-config

We assume 10.2.0.44 is the IP address of the Wireshark box, ensure that you don’t block UDP traffic on port 37008 because the stream from Mikrotik uses that target port. And define your own filters.

About Wireshark configuration is really simple, just set up the filter to allow only traffic from sniffing stream and select the network interface where traffic comes.

wireshark-config

Previous captures allow us to debug DNS queries to Google DNS service, this is the result when you click to the icon marked with a red circle on previous screen capture.

wireshark-traffic

Sniffing traffic in a Linux box and streaming in real-time to Wireshark on Windows

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

Sniffing and inspect complex protocols on “tcpdump” is usually painful. Of course, “tcpflow” is a very useful tool but is not always enough to sniff in a console. Wireshark is always a better option when it’s time to debug and troubleshooting communication problems.

But it’s not always easy to plug a Network TAP where you want to sniff. If at that point we have a Linux box with “ssh” and “tcpdump”. An interesting option is stream sniffed traffic to another box with Wireshark and dissect packet octets in their layers, fields, etc.

When Wireshark box is based on Windows you need “plink.exe“, and you can do thinks like that:

plink.exe -ssh -pw LINUX_BOX_PASSWORD root@LINUX_BOX_IP "tcpdump -n -i INTERFACE_TO_SNIFF -s 0 -w - not port 22" | "%PATH_TO_WIRESHARK\Wireshark.exe" -k -i -

Next you have a screenshot with a real life example of that:

tcpdump_streams_to_wireshark_secure