How to display interface in tcpdump output flow?

Question

This seems to be quite a trivial problem, but after some searching I can't stil figure out the answer. One can run tcpdump using "any" as the interface description, ie:

 # tcpdump -i any -n host 192.168.0.1

Is there any way to force tcpdump to show on which interface displayed packet was captured?

Update:

As more people confirmed this is probably not possible with vanilla tcpdump, can someone propose a solution to mentioned problem? Perhaps different sniffer?

General issue is as follows: On a system with 50 interfaces determine what is inbound interface for packets coming from specific ip address.

Solution 1

I hope somebody is still interested in the solution to the problem. ;) We had the same issue in our company and I started writing a script for this.

I wrote a blog post about it with the source code and a screenshot.

I've also shared it below...

And the code: (Be sure to check my site for future updates)

#!/bin/bash
#===================================================================================
#
# FILE: dump.sh
# USAGE: dump.sh [-i interface] [tcpdump-parameters]
# DESCRIPTION: tcpdump on any interface and add the prefix [Interace:xy] in front of the dump data.
# OPTIONS: same as tcpdump
# REQUIREMENTS: tcpdump, sed, ifconfig, kill, awk, grep, posix regex matching
# BUGS:  ---
# FIXED: - In 1.0 The parameter -w would not work without -i parameter as multiple tcpdumps are started.
#        - In 1.1 VLAN's would not be shown if a single interface was dumped.
# NOTES: ---
#        - 1.2 git initial
# AUTHOR: Sebastian Haas
# COMPANY: pharma mall
# VERSION: 1.2
# CREATED: 16.09.2014
# REVISION: 22.09.2014
#
#===================================================================================

# When this exits, exit all background processes:
trap 'kill $(jobs -p) &> /dev/null && sleep 0.2 &&  echo ' EXIT
# Create one tcpdump output per interface and add an identifier to the beginning of each line:
if [[ $@ =~ -i[[:space:]]?[^[:space:]]+ ]]; then
    tcpdump -l $@ | sed 's/^/[Interface:'"${BASH_REMATCH[0]:2}"'] /' &
else
    for interface in $(ifconfig | grep '^[a-z0-9]' | awk '{print $1}')
    do
       tcpdump -l -i $interface -nn $@ | sed 's/^/[Interface:'"$interface"']    /' &
    done
fi
# wait .. until CTRL+C
wait

Solution 2

You can use the -e option to print the ethernet headers, then you can correlate the src/dst MAC addresses with your network interfaces ;).

Solution 3

Just a note, tcpdump 4.99 now displays the interface name/direction in the output:

[vagrant@localhost]$sudo tcpdump -i any arp
tcpdump: data link type LINUX_SLL2
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v[v]... for full protocol decode
listening on any, link-type LINUX_SLL2 (Linux cooked v2), snapshot length 262144 bytes
18:38:49.662151 br-ex Out ARP, Request who-has 172.18.1.10 tell localhost.localdomain, length 28
18:38:49.662432 br-ex In  ARP, Reply 172.18.1.10 is-at fa:16:3e:31:b9:10 (oui Unknown), length 28

interface br-ex, above.

Solution 4

To add to Sebastian Haas's great bash script. I had to simplify his script since it failed in this line tcpdump -l $@ | sed 's/^/[Interface:'"${BASH_REMATCH[0]:2}"'] /' &.

While it is not as flexible as the original script, it is more likely to run in stripped down linux system.

#!/bin/sh
interfaces="eth0 ip6tnl1" # Interfaces list separated by whitespace
#===================================================================================
#
# FILE: dump-stripped.sh
# USAGE: dump.sh [tcpdump-parameters]
# DESCRIPTION: tcpdump on any interface and add the prefix [Interace:xy] in 
#               front of the dump data. Simplified to work in more limited env.
# OPTIONS: similar to tcpdump
# REQUIREMENTS: tcpdump, sed, ifconfig, kill, awk, grep, posix regex matching
# AUTHOR: Sebastian Haas (Stripped down By Brian Khuu)
#
#===================================================================================

# When this exits, exit all background processes:
trap 'kill $(jobs -p) &> /dev/null && sleep 0.2 &&  echo ' EXIT

# Create one tcpdump output per interface and add an identifier to the beginning of each line:
for interface in $interfaces;
do tcpdump -l -i $interface -nn $@ | sed 's/^/[Interface:'"$interface"'] /' 2>/dev/null & done;

# wait .. until CTRL+C
wait;

---

You may also be interested in the current github issue ticket regarding this feature omission in https://github.com/the-tcpdump-group/tcpdump/issues/296 .

Solution 5

If you are running on Mac, there is a -k option to tcpdump if you are using pktap interface, which dumps interface name among other useful metadata.

   -k     Control the display of packet metadata via an optional metadata_arg argument. This is useful when displaying packet saved in the
          pcap-ng file format or with interfaces that support the PKTAP data link type.

          By default, when the metadata_arg optional argument is not specified, any available packet metadata information is printed  out.

          The  metadata_arg  argument controls the display of specific packet metadata information using a flag word, where each character
          corresponds to a type of packet metadata as follows:

                 I     interface name (or interface ID)
                 N     process name
                 P     process ID
                 S     service class
                 D     direction
                 C     comment
                 U     process UUID (not shown by default)
                 A     display all types of metadata

          This is an Apple modification.

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Comments

[Victor Matheus Alves Ramos]

I concur. Typically when I'm sniffing traffic, I already know where the traffic is coming from or where it's going. If I have to figure that out, I have bigger fish to fry first...

[kasperd]

Using -e only prints one MAC address on each line. For incoming packets it's the source MAC which isn't very useful in identifying which interface it arrived on.