1. Basics

1.1. BASIC COMMUNICATION

Just see what’s going on, by looking at all interfaces.

tcpdump -i any

Print the list of the network interfaces available on the system and on which tcpdump can capture packets.

tcpdump --list-interfaces

1.3. SPECIFIC INTERFACE

Basic view of what’s happening on a particular interface.

tcpdump -i eth0

1.4. RAW OUTPUT VIEW

Verbose output (-v), with no resolution of hostnames or port numbers (-n), absolute sequence numbers (-S), and human-readable timestamps (-tttt).

tcpdump -ttttnvvS

1.5. FIND TRAFFIC BY IP

One of the most common queries, this will show you traffic from 1.2.3.4, whether it’s the source or the destination.

tcpdump host 1.2.3.4

1.6. SEEING MORE OF THE PACKET WITH HEX OUTPUT

Hex output (-X) is useful when you want to see the content of the packets in question, and it’s often best used when you’re isolating a few candiates for closer scrutiny.

tcpdump -nvXSs0 icmp

1.7. FILTERING BY SOURCE AND DESTINATION

It’s quite easy to isolate traffic based on either source or destination using src and dst.

tcpdump src 2.3.4.5
tcpdump dst 3.4.5.6

1.8. FINDING PACKETS BY NETWORK

To find packets going to or from a particular network, use the net option. You can combine this with the src or dst options as well.

tcpdump net 1.2.3.0/24

You can find specific port traffic by using the port option followed by the port number.

tcpdump port 3389
tcpdump src port 3389

1.10. SHOW TRAFFIC OF ONE PROTOCOL

If you’re looking one particular kind of traffic, you can use tcp (or proto 6), udp (or proto 17) and many others as well.

tcpdump tcp # same as tcpdump proto 6

1.11. SHOW ONLY IP6 TRAFFIC

You can also find all IPv6 traffic using the protocol option.

tcpdump ip6

1.12. FIND TRAFFIC USING PORT RANGES

You can also use a range of ports to find traffic.

tcpdump portrange 21-23

1.13. FIND TRAFFIC BASED ON PACKET SIZE

If you’re looking for packets of a particular size you can use these options. You can use less, greater, or their associated symbols that you would expect from mathmatics.

tcpdump less 32
tcpdump greater 64
tcpdump <=128

1.14. READING / WRITING CAPTURES TO A FILE

It’s often useful to save packet captures into a file for analysis in the future. These files are known as PACAP (PEE-cap) files, and they can be processed by hundreds of different applications (e.g. Wireshark), including network analyzers, intrusion detection systems, and of course by tcpdump itself.

tcpdump port 80 -w capture_file.pcap

You can read PACAP files by using the -r switch. Note that you can use all the regular commands within tcpdump while reading in a file; you’re only limited by the fact that you can’t capture and process what doesn’t exist in the file already.

tcpdump -r capture_file.pcap

2. Advanced

2.1. FROM SPECIFIC IP AND DESTINED FOR A SPECIFIC PORT

Let’s find all traffic from 10.5.2.3 going to any host on port 3389.

tcpdump -nvvS src 10.5.2.3 and dst port 3389

2.2. FIND ONE NETWORK TO ANOTHER

Let’s look for all traffic comming from 192.168.x.x and goning to the 10.x or 172.16.x.x networks, and we’re showing hex output with no hostname resolution and one level of extra verbosity.

tcpdump -nvX src net 192.168.0.0/16 and dst net 10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/16

2.3. NON ICMP TRAFFIC GOING TO A SPECIFIC IP

This will show us all traffic goning to 192.168.0.2 that is NOT ICMP.

tcpdump dst 192.168.0.2 and not icmp

2.4. TRAFFIC FROM A HOST THAT ISN’T ON A SPECIFIC PORT

This will show us all traffic from a host and isn’t SSH traffic (assuming default port usage).

tcpdump -vv src mars and not dst port 22

Keep in mind that when you’re building complex queries you might have to group your options using single quotes. Single quotes are used in order to tell tcpdump to ignore certain special characters—​in this case below the "()" brackets. The same technique can be used to group using other expressions such as host, port, net, etc.

tcpdump 'src 10.0.2.4 and (dst port 3389 or 22)'

2.5. ISOLATE TCP FLAGS

You can also use filters to isolate packets with specific TCP flags set.

  • Isolate TCP RST flags.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] & 4 != 0'
tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] == tcp-rst'

  • Isolate TCP SYNC flags.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] & 2 != 0'
tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] == tcp-syn'

  • Isolate packets that have both SYN and ACK flags set.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] = 18'

  • Isolate TCP URG flags.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] & 32 != 0'
tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] == tcp-urg'

  • Isolate TCP ACK flags.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] & 16!=0'
tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] == tcp-ack'

  • Isolate TCP PSH flags.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] & 8!=0'
tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] == tcp-psh'

  • Isolate TCP FIN flags.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] & 1!=0'
tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] == tcp-fin'

  • Isolate packets that have both SYN and RST flags set.

    tcpdump 'tcp[13] = 6'

2.6. FIND HTTP USER AGENTS

tcpdump -vvAls0 | grep 'User-Agent:'

  • -A: Print each packet (minus its link level header) in ASCII.

  • -l: Make stdout line buffered.

2.7. CLEARTEXT GET REQUESTS

tcpdump -vvAls0 | grep 'GET'

2.8. FIND HTTP HOST HEADERS

tcpdump -vvAls0 | grep 'Host:'

2.9. FIND HTTP COOKIES

tcpdump -vvAls0 | egrep 'Set-Cookie:|Cookie:'

2.10. FIND DNS TRAFFIC

tcpdump -vvAs0 port 53

2.10.1. FIND FTP TRAFFIC

tcpdump -vvAs0 port ftp or ftp-data

2.11. FIND NTP TRAFFIC

tcpdump -vvAs0 port 123

2.12. FIND CLEARTEXT PASSWORDS

tcpdump port http or port ftp or port smtp or port imap or port pop3 or port telnet -lA | egrep -i -B5 'pass=|pwd=|log=|login=|user=|username=|pw=|passw=|passwd=|password=|pass:|user:|username:|password:|login:|pass |user '

3. 3. Troubleshooting

3.1. bad udp cksum: issue with hardware offloading (offloading tx-checksumming)

$ sudo tcpdump -s 1500 -i ens32 -nvv icmp or port tftp
tcpdump: listening on ens32, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), snapshot length 1500 bytes
09:51:31.613595 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 16236, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 44)
    192.168.91.128.49586 > 10.170.108.237.69: [bad udp cksum 0x93e9 -> 0x7770!] TFTP, length 16, RRQ "/foo" netascii
09:51:36.614757 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 16561, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 44)
    192.168.91.128.49586 > 10.170.108.237.69: [bad udp cksum 0x93e9 -> 0x7770!] TFTP, length 16, RRQ "/foo" netascii
09:51:41.615174 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 17473, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 44)
    192.168.91.128.49586 > 10.170.108.237.69: [bad udp cksum 0x93e9 -> 0x7770!] TFTP, length 16, RRQ "/foo" netascii
09:51:46.616206 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 17689, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 44)
    192.168.91.128.49586 > 10.170.108.237.69: [bad udp cksum 0x93e9 -> 0x7770!] TFTP, length 16, RRQ "/foo" netascii
09:51:51.617006 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 18773, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 44)
    192.168.91.128.49586 > 10.170.108.237.69: [bad udp cksum 0x93e9 -> 0x7770!] TFTP, length 16, RRQ "/foo" netascii

After checking active NIC hardware offloading options you can see the obvious

$ sudo ethtool -k eth0 | grep on
rx-checksumming: on
tx-checksumming: on
scatter-gather: on
generic-segmentation-offload: on
generic-receive-offload: on
rx-vlan-offload: on
tx-vlan-offload: on

After disabling TCO (tcp offloading) for TX/RX on the NIC the problem is gone

$ sudo ethtool -K eth0 tx off rx off
$ sudo tcpdump -s 1500 -i ens32 -nvv icmp or port tftp
tcpdump: listening on ens32, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), snapshot length 1500 bytes
10:44:26.668116 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 10862, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 44)
    192.168.91.128.34984 > 10.170.108.237.69: [udp sum ok] TFTP, length 16, RRQ "/foo" netascii
10:44:31.668327 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 11126, offset 0, flags [DF], proto UDP (17), length 44)
    192.168.91.128.34984 > 10.170.108.237.69: [udp sum ok] TFTP, length 16, RRQ "/foo" netascii

4. 4. References