A CLI client called tshark comes with it. Functionality-wise, Wireshark is quite similar to tcpdump, and is available on multiple platforms including Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X, and MS Windows. Wiresharkįormerly known as Ethereal, Wireshark is an open-source packet analyzer with graphical front end. It also supports regular expressions for advanced packet filtering, and allows one to export and import packet dumps to and from a file. tcpdump uses libpcap library to capture packets on OSI layer 2 (e.g., Ethernet, PPP, and SLIP), and above. The most popular general-purpose packet analyzer. The following list shows popular open-source packet sniffers that are available on Linux. Packet sniffing tools are very useful when you diagnose networks or protect against security attacks over networks. What are popular packet sniffers on LinuxĪ packet sniffer tool captures live packets from networks, decodes them according to protocol specifications, and optionally takes actions according to the parsed packet contents (e.g., in case of intrusion detection/prevention systems).

Swarfarm packet capture tool