tshark Usage Examples

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Our custom profiles repository for Wireshark

Our Udemy course on Wireshark

Our Udemy course on Wireless Packet capture

As many of you know, T-Shark is the command line version of Wireshark.  For T-Shark beginners, look first here. For more advanced T-Shark users, read on. I often get asked for T-Shark 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+=$1;count+=1} END {printf(“%9.6f\n”,sum/count)}’
Display the slowest DNS response time	tshark -r nfl.pcapng \ -Y “dns.flags.response == 1 and dns.time” \ -T fields -e dns.time | \ sort -rn | \ head -1 | \ sed ‘s/0*$/ 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

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