Ubuntu Manpage: ngrep - network grep

NAME

       ngrep - network grep

SYNOPSIS

       ngrep  <-hNXViwqpevxlDtTRM> <-IO pcap_dump > < -n num > < -d dev > < -A num > < -s snaplen
       > < -S limitlen > < -W normal|byline|single|none > < -c cols > < -P char > < -F file  >  <
       match expression > < bpf filter >

DESCRIPTION

       ngrep  strives to provide most of GNU grep's common features, applying them to the network
       layer.  ngrep is a pcap-aware tool  that  will  allow  you  to  specify  extended  regular
       expressions  to  match against data payloads of packets.  It currently recognizes TCP, UDP
       and ICMP across Ethernet, PPP, SLIP, FDDI and null interfaces, and understands bpf  filter
       logic  in  the  same  fashion as more common packet sniffing tools, such as tcpdump(8) and
       snoop(1).

OPTIONS

-h Display help/usage information.

-N Show sub-protocol number along with single-character identifier (useful when
observing raw or unknown protocols).

-X Treat the match expression as a hexadecimal string. See the explanation of match
expression below.

-V Display version information.

-i Ignore case for the regex expression.

-w Match the regex expression as a word.

-q Be quiet; don't output any information other than packet headers and their payloads
(if relevant).

-p Don't put the interface into promiscuous mode.

-e Show empty packets. Normally empty packets are discarded because they have no
payload to search. If specified, empty packets will be shown, regardless of the
specified regex expression.

-v Invert the match; only display packets that don't match.

-x Dump packet contents as hexadecimal as well as ASCII.

-l Make stdout line buffered.

-D When reading pcap_dump files, replay them at their recorded time intervals (mimic
realtime).

-t Print a timestamp in the form of YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS.UUUUUU everytime a packet is
matched.

-T Print a timestamp in the form of +S.UUUUUU, indicating the delta between packet
matches.

-R Do not try to drop privileges to the DROPPRIVS_USER.

ngrep makes no effort to validate input from live or offline sources as it is
focused more on performance and handling large amounts of data than protocol
correctness, which is most often a fair assumption to make. However, sometimes it
matters and thus as a rule ngrep will try to be defensive and drop any root
privileges it might have.

There exist scenarios where this behaviour can become an obstacle, so this option
is provided to end-users who want to disable this feature, but must do so with an
understanding of the risks. Packets can be randomly malformed or even specifically
designed to overflow sniffers and take control of them, and revoking root
privileges is currently the only risk mitigation ngrep employs against such an
attack. Use this option and turn it off at your own risk.

-c cols
Explicitly set the console width to ``cols''. Note that this is the console width,
and not the full width of what ngrep prints out as payloads; depending on the
output mode ngrep may print less than ``cols'' bytes per line (indentation).

-F file
Read in the bpf filter from the specified filename. This is a compatibility option
for users familiar with tcpdump. Please note that specifying ``-F'' will override
any bpf filter specified on the command-line.

-P char
Specify an alternate character to signify non-printable characters when displayed.
The default is ``.''.

-W normal|byline|single|none
Specify an alternate manner for displaying packets, when not in hexadecimal mode.
The ``byline'' mode honors embedded linefeeds, wrapping text only when a linefeed
is encountered (useful for observing HTTP transactions, for instance). The
``none'' mode doesn't wrap under any circumstance (entire payload is displayed on
one line). The ``single'' mode is conceptually the same as ``none'', except that
everything including IP and source/destination header information is all on one
line. ``normal'' is the default mode and is only included for completeness. This
option is incompatible with ``-x''.

-s snaplen
Set the bpf caplen to snaplen (default 65536).

-S limitlen
Set the upper limit on the size of packets that ngrep will look at. Useful for
looking at only the first N bytes of packets without changing the BPF snaplen.

-I pcap_dump
Input file pcap_dump into ngrep. Works with any pcap-compatible dump file format.
This option is useful for searching for a wide range of different patterns over the
same packet stream.

-O pcap_dump
Output matched packets to a pcap-compatible dump file. This feature does not
interfere with normal output to stdout.

-n num Match only num packets total, then exit.

-d dev By default ngrep will select a default interface to listen on. Use this option to
force ngrep to listen on interface dev.

-A num Dump num packets of trailing context after matching a packet.

-c cols
Ignore the detected terminal width and force the column width to the specified
size.

-P char
Change the non-printable character from the default ``.'' to the character
specified.

-K num Kill matching TCP connections (like tcpkill). The numeric argument controls how
many RST segments are sent.

match expression
A match expression is either an extended regular expression, or if the -X option is
specified, a string signifying a hexadecimal value. An extended regular expression
follows the rules as implemented by the GNU regex library. Hexadecimal expressions
can optionally be preceded by `0x'. E.g., `DEADBEEF', `0xDEADBEEF'.

bpf filter
Selects a filter that specifies what packets will be dumped. If no bpf filter is
given, all IP packets seen on the selected interface will be dumped. Otherwise,
only packets for which bpf filter is `true' will be dumped.

The bpf filter consists of one or more primitives. Primitives usually consist of an id
(name or number) preceded by one or more qualifiers. There are three different kinds of
qualifier:

type qualifiers say what kind of thing the id name or number refers to. Possible types
are host, net and port. E.g., `host blort', `net 1.2.3', `port 80'. If there is
no type qualifier, host is assumed.

dir qualifiers specify a particular transfer direction to and/or from id. Possible
directions are src, dst, src or dst and src and dst. E.g., `src foo', `dst net
1.2.3', `src or dst port ftp-data'. If there is no dir qualifier, src or dst is
assumed. For `null' link layers (i.e. point to point protocols such as slip) the
inbound and outbound qualifiers can be used to specify a desired direction.

proto qualifiers are restricted to ip-only protocols. Possible protos are: tcp , udp and
icmp. e.g., `udp src foo' or `tcp port 21'. If there is no proto qualifier, all
protocols consistent with the type are assumed. E.g., `src foo' means `ip and
((tcp or udp) src foo)', `net bar' means `ip and (net bar)', and `port 53' means
`ip and ((tcp or udp) port 53)'.

In addition to the above, there are some special `primitive' keywords that don't follow
the pattern: gateway, broadcast, less, greater and arithmetic expressions. All of these
are described below.

More complex filter expressions are built up by using the words and, or and not to combine
primitives. E.g., `host blort and not port ftp and not port ftp-data'. To save typing,
identical qualifier lists can be omitted. E.g., `tcp dst port ftp or ftp-data or domain'
is exactly the same as `tcp dst port ftp or tcp dst port ftp-data or tcp dst port domain'.

Allowable primitives are:

dst host host
True if the IP destination field of the packet is host, which may be either an
address or a name.

src host host
True if the IP source field of the packet is host.

host host
True if either the IP source or destination of the packet is host. Any of the
above host expressions can be prepended with the keywords, ip, arp, or rarp as in:
ip host host
which is equivalent to:

ether dst ehost
True if the ethernet destination address is ehost. Ehost may be either a name from
/etc/ethers or a number (see ethers(3N) for numeric format).

ether src ehost
True if the ethernet source address is ehost.

ether host ehost
True if either the ethernet source or destination address is ehost.

gateway host
True if the packet used host as a gateway. I.e., the ethernet source or
destination address was host but neither the IP source nor the IP destination was
host. Host must be a name and must be found in both /etc/hosts and /etc/ethers.
(An equivalent expression is
ether host ehost and not host host
which can be used with either names or numbers for host / ehost.)

dst net net
True if the IP destination address of the packet has a network number of net. Net
may be either a name from /etc/networks or a network number (see networks(4) for
details).

src net net
True if the IP source address of the packet has a network number of net.

net net
True if either the IP source or destination address of the packet has a network
number of net.

net net mask mask
True if the IP address matches net with the specific netmask. May be qualified
with src or dst.

net net/len
True if the IP address matches net a netmask len bits wide. May be qualified with
src or dst.

dst port port
True if the packet is ip/tcp or ip/udp and has a destination port value of port.
The port can be a number or a name used in /etc/services (see tcp(4P) and udp(4P)).
If a name is used, both the port number and protocol are checked. If a number or
ambiguous name is used, only the port number is checked (e.g., dst port 513 will
print both tcp/login traffic and udp/who traffic, and port domain will print both
tcp/domain and udp/domain traffic).

src port port
True if the packet has a source port value of port.

port port
True if either the source or destination port of the packet is port. Any of the
above port expressions can be prepended with the keywords, tcp or udp, as in:
tcp src port port
which matches only tcp packets whose source port is port.

less length
True if the packet has a length less than or equal to length. This is equivalent
to:
len <= length.

greater length
True if the packet has a length greater than or equal to length. This is
equivalent to:
len >= length.

ip proto protocol
True if the packet is an ip packet (see ip(4P)) of protocol type protocol.
Protocol can be a number or one of the names tcp, udp or icmp. Note that the
identifiers tcp and udp are also keywords and must be escaped via backslash (\),
which is \\ in the C-shell.

ip broadcast
True if the packet is an IP broadcast packet. It checks for both the all-zeroes
and all-ones broadcast conventions, and looks up the local subnet mask.

ip multicast
True if the packet is an IP multicast packet.

ip Abbreviation for:
ether proto ip

tcp, udp, icmp
Abbreviations for:
ip proto p
where p is one of the above protocols.

expr relop expr
True if the relation holds, where relop is one of >, <, >=, <=, =, !=, and expr is
an arithmetic expression composed of integer constants (expressed in standard C
syntax), the normal binary operators [+, -, *, /, &, |], a length operator, and
special packet data accessors. To access data inside the packet, use the following
syntax:
proto [ expr : size ]
Proto is one of ip, tcp, udp or icmp, and indicates the protocol layer for the
index operation. The byte offset, relative to the indicated protocol layer, is
given by expr. Size is optional and indicates the number of bytes in the field of
interest; it can be either one, two, or four, and defaults to one. The length
operator, indicated by the keyword len, gives the length of the packet.

For example, `ether[0] & 1 != 0' catches all multicast traffic. The expression
`ip[0] & 0xf != 5' catches all IP packets with options. The expression `ip[6:2] &
0x1fff = 0' catches only unfragmented datagrams and frag zero of fragmented
datagrams. This check is implicitly applied to the tcp and udp index operations.
For instance, tcp[0] always means the first byte of the TCP header, and never means
the first byte of an intervening fragment.

Primitives may be combined using:

A parenthesized group of primitives and operators (parentheses are special to the
Shell and must be escaped).

Negation (`!' or `not').

Concatenation (`&&' or `and').

Alternation (`||' or `or').

Negation has highest precedence. Alternation and concatenation have equal precedence and
associate left to right. Note that explicit and tokens, not juxtaposition, are now
required for concatenation.

If an identifier is given without a keyword, the most recent keyword is assumed. For
example,
not host vs and ace
is short for
not host vs and host ace
which should not be confused with
not ( host vs or ace )

Expression arguments can be passed to ngrep as either a single argument or as multiple
arguments, whichever is more convenient. Generally, if the expression contains Shell
metacharacters, it is easier to pass it as a single, quoted argument. Multiple arguments
are concatenated with spaces before being parsed.

DIAGNOSTICS

       Errors from ngrep, libpcap, and the GNU regex library are all output to stderr.

AUTHOR

       Written by Jordan Ritter <jpr5@darkridge.com>.

REPORTING BUGS

       Please report bugs to the ngrep's Sourceforge Bug Tracker, located at

           http://sourceforge.net/projects/ngrep/

       Non-bug, non-feature-request general feedback should be sent to  the  author  directly  by
       email.

NOTES

       ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

*nux                                      November 2006                                  NGREP(8)