| Check out these great references as well: |
|---|
| Our custom profiles repository for Wireshark |
| Our Udemy course on Wireshark |
| Our Udemy course on Wireless Packet capture |
As many of you know, tshark is the command-line version of Wireshark, designed for packet capture and deep protocol analysis without a graphical interface. It uses the same underlying dissection engine as Wireshark, which means it can decode hundreds of protocols with the same level of detail—but entirely from the terminal.
If you are a tshark beginner, look first here.
For more advanced tshark users, read on.
I often get asked for actual tshark usage examples, so here is a compiled list – think of it like a detailed cheat sheet:
| tshark Objective | tshark Command |
|---|---|
| Available Interfaces | tshark -D |
| Help | tshark -h |
| Capture on an Interface | tshark -i # (where # is the interface number from -D command above) tshark -i ‘name’ (where ‘name’ is the interface name from -D command above) |
| Write capture to a file | tshark -i # -w {path and file name} |
| Capture using a filter | tshark -i # -f “filter text using BPF syntax” example: tshark -i 5 -f “tcp port 80” |
| Generic Capture for an IP Address | tshark -R “ip.addr == 192.168.0.1″ -r /tmp/capture.pcapng |
| Ethernet address 00:08:15:00:08:15 | eth.addr == 00:08:15:00:08:15 |
| Ethernet type 0×0806 (ARP) | eth.type == 0×0806 |
| Ethernet broadcast | eth.addr == ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff |
| No ARP | not arp |
| IPv4 only | ip |
| IPv6 only | ip6 |
| IPv4 address isn’t 192.168.0.1, don’t use != for this! | !(ip.addr == 192.168.0.1) |
| IPX only | ipx |
| TCP only | tcp |
| UDP only | udp |
| To include display filters in the command when examining a capture file | -Y <display filter> |
| UDP port isn’t 53 (not DNS), don’t use != for this! | !(tcp.port == 53) |
| TCP or UDP port is 80 (HTTP) | tcp.port == 80 || udp.port == 80 |
| HTTP Only | http |
| No ARP and no DNS | not arp and not (udp.port == 53) |
| Non-HTTP and non-SMTP to/from 192.168.0.1 | not (tcp.port == 80) and not (tcp.port == 25) and ip.addr == 192.168.0.1 |
| Creating a “;” separated file with “source IP” “destination IP” and “Destination Port” from all with SYN initiated connections, you can use following sample: Use the options -T , -E and -e (see man pages for infos) | tshark -nn -r capturefile.dmp -T fields -E separator=’;’ -e ip.src -e tcp.srcport -e ip.dst -e tcp.dstport ‘(tcp.flags.syn == 1 and tcp.flags.ack == 0)’ |
| Display http response codes | tshark -o “tcp.desegment_tcp_streams:TRUE” -i eth0 -R “http.response” -T fields -e http.response.code |
| Display Top 10 URLs | tshark -r capture.pcapng -R http.request -T fields -e http.host -e http.request.uri | sed -e ‘s/?.*$//’ | sed -e ‘s#^(.*)t(.*)$#http://12#’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head |
| Display Source IP and MAC Address. (coma sep) | tshark -i eth0 -nn -e ip.src -e eth.src -Tfields -E separator=, -R ip |
| Display Target IP and Mac Address (coma sep) | tshark -i eth0 -nn -e ip.dst -e eth.dst -Tfields -E separator=, -R ip |
| Source and Target IPv4 | tshark -i eth0 -nn -e ip.src -e ip.dst -Tfields -E separator=, -R ip |
| Source and Target IPv6 | tshark -i eth0 -nn -e ip6.src -e ip6.dst -Tfields -E separator=, -R ip6 |
| Source IP and DNS Query | tshark -i eth0 -nn -e ip.src -e dns.qry.name -E separator=”;” -T fields port 53 |
| Display only the Source and the Destination IP | tshark -o column.format:’”Source”, “%s”,”Destination”, “%d”‘ -Ttext |
| Various Statistics from a capture: We suggest you play with some of these command to check out the various statistics the individual commands offer. We use an example filename: capture.pcapng – just substitute this for the file name you want to analyze. | tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz io,stat,1,0,sum(tcp.analysis.retransmission)”ip.addr==10.10.10.10″ > stat.txt |
| tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz io,stat,120,”ip.addr==194.134.109.48 && tcp”,”COUNT(tcp.analysis.retransmission)ip.addr==194.134.109.48 && tcp.analysis.retransmission” | |
| tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz io,stat,30,”COUNT(tcp.analysis.retransmission) tcp.analysis.retransmission” | |
| tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz io,stat,30, “COUNT(tcp.analysis.retranmission)tcp.analysis.retransmission”, “AVG(tcp.window_size)tcp.window_sizeтАЭ,тАЭMAX(tcp.window_size)”, “MIN(tcp.window_size)tcp.window_size” | |
| tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz io,stat,5,”COUNT(tcp.analysis.retransmission) tcp.analysis.retransmission”,”COUNT(tcp.analysis.duplicate_ack)tcp.analysis.duplicate_ack”, “COUNT(tcp.analysis.lost_segment) tcp.analysis.lost_segment”, “COUNT(tcp.analysis.fast_retransmission) tcp.analysis.fast_retransmission” | |
| tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz io,stat,5,”MIN(tcp.analysis.ack_rtt)tcp.analysis.ack_rtt”, “MAX(tcp.analysis.ack_rtt)tcp.analysis.ack_rtt”,”AVG(tcp.analysis.ack_rtt)tcp.analysis.ack_rtt” | |
| tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz ip_hosts,tree | |
| tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz ptype,tree | |
| Display all IP conversations in a capture file | tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz conv,ip |
| Display all TCP conversations in a capture file | tshark -r capture.pcapng -qz conv,tcp |
| Display the number of HTTP redirections in a capture file | tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y “http.response.code in {300..399}” | wc -l |
| Display the users where an iphone has connected to the network | tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y ‘lower(dhcp.option.hostname) contains “iphone” ‘ -T fields -e dhcp.option.hostname | sort -u |
| Display the average DNS response time | tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y dns.time -T fields -e dns.time | awk ‘{sum+=$1;count+=1} END {printf(“%9.6fn”,sum/count)}’ |
| Display the slowest DNS response time | tshark -r nfl.pcapng -Y “dns.flags.response == 1 and dns.time” -T fields -e dns.time | sort -rn | head -1 | sed ‘s/0*$/ seconds/’ |
| Display hosts that do not support SACK | tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y “tcp.flags.syn==1 and (tcp.flags.ack==0 or (tcp.flags.ack == 1 and tcp.stream in {$( tshark -r capture.pcapng -Y “tcp.flags.syn==1 and tcp.flags.ack==0 and tcp.options.sack_perm” -T fields -e tcp.stream | sort -u | xargs ) 4294967295} ) ) and not tcp.options.sack_perm” -T fields -e ip.src |
You will find other T-Shark articles by clicking here.
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