How do I use tshark to print request-response pairs from a pcap file?

10
votes

Given a pcap file, I'm able to extract a lot of information from the reconstructed HTTP request and responses using the neat filters provided by Wireshark. I've also been able to split the pcap file into each TCP stream.

Trouble I'm running into now is that of all the cool filters I'm able to use with tshark, I can't find one that will let me print out full request/response bodies. I'm calling something like this:

 tshark -r dump.pcap -R "tcp.stream==123 and http.request" -T fields -e http.request.uri

Is there some filter name I can pass to -e to get the request/response body? The closest I've come is to use the -V flag, but it also prints out a bunch of information I don't necessary want and want to avoid having to kludge out with a "dumb" filter.

4
wiresharkpcappacket-capturetshark
What was the snarflen of the original capture. If you didnt collect the full packet you probably have the data. – Adrian Cornish
The captures were fine. The MTU on the interface I used was 1514 and I did a capture of 1600. I opened the pcap in Wireshark and can get individual request-response pairs as streams; I was just looking for a way to script against it. – Steven
Cool - just ruling out the most obvious – Adrian Cornish
What about TShark option -O (-O protocols: Only show packet details of these protocols, comma separated) $ tshark -r clmt_04.pcap -R "http.request or http.response" -V -O http > http.txt – user684451
Think this would be more useful on SO or SF. – Hello71

4 Answers

9
votes

If you are willing to switch to another tool, tcptrace can do this with the -e option. It also has an HTTP analysis extension (xHTTP option) that generates the HTTP request/repsonse pairs for each TCP stream.

Here is a usage example:

tcptrace --csv -xHTTP -f'port=80' -lten capturefile.pcap
  • --csv to format output as comma sperated variable
  • -xHTTP for HTTP request/response written to 'http.times' this also switches on -e to dump the TCP stream payloads, so you really don't need -e as well
  • -f'port=80' to filter out non-web traffic
  • -l for long output form
  • -t to give me progress indication
  • -n to turn off hostname resolution (much faster without this)
3
votes

If you captured a pcap file, you can do the following to show all requests+responses.

filename="capture_file.pcap"
for stream in `tshark -r "$filename" -2 -R "tcp and (http.request or http.response)" -T fields -e tcp.stream | sort -n | uniq`; do
    echo "==========BEGIN REQUEST=========="
    tshark -q -r "$filename" -z follow,tcp,ascii,$stream;
    echo "==========END REQUEST=========="
done;

I just made diyism answer a bit easier to understand (you don't need sudo, and multiline script is imo simple to look at)

3
votes

This probably wasn't an option when the question was asked but newer versions of tshark can "follow" conversations.

tshark -nr dump.pcap -qz follow,tcp,ascii,123

I know this is a super old question. I'm just adding this for anyone that ends up here looking for a current solution.

0
votes

I use this line to show last 10 seconds request body and response body(https://gist.github.com/diyism/eaa7297cbf2caff7b851):

sudo tshark -a duration:10 -w /tmp/input.pcap;for stream in `sudo tshark -r /tmp/input.pcap -R "tcp and (http.request or http.response) and !(ip.addr==192.168.0.241)" -T fields -e tcp.stream | sort -n | uniq`; do sudo tshark -q -r /tmp/input.pcap -z follow,tcp,ascii,$stream; done;sudo rm /tmp/input.pcap