Sniffer for Windows That Shows Process ID?

Sniffer for Windows That Shows Process ID?
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Subject Author Date
Sniffer for Windows That Shows Process ID? Will 10-10-2007
Posted by jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk on October 11, 2007, 9:16 am
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Will wrote:

> Can someone recommend a sniffer for Windows that will show the
> process ID and name of the process sending or receiving each packet
> shown in the sniffer?
>
> I normally use ethereal or wireshark and didn't see a straightforward
> way to include this information.


this is indeed a noble search ! I have looked for the same thing
myself.

netstat can see process id, but only offers a snapshot, it's
stateless, and as a result of it only doing a snapshot, it doesn't
record whether the packet is incoming or outgoing. And of course it's
only a snapshot style port status thing.

You said something like TCPView do what you want ""if you had the
patience of a saint?" But from what I remember, TCPView is not a packet
sniffer. You never see inside the packet.

I did find a port logger (software running on the machine of course,
it's necessary for this) that records process id , and whether the
packet is incoming or outgoing. But it's not a packet sniffer.
Sygate personal firewall, probably the last free version. Maybe
available from oldversion.com or elsewhere. You can turn off the
firewall feature leaving just the port logger. Though the last time i
installed it it crashed, maybe blocking outgoing , and so I removed it
and haven't tried it since.

Somebody should really write what you suggest. It'd be only a small
addition to Ethereal. Indeed, it's not purely a 'packet' thing, but in
a strict definition of packet, neither is TCP. TIME isn't a purely
packet thing either, by any definition, though ethereal displays it
alongside the packet. MS Word is popular because it draws pictures,
doesn't just allow the writing of words. I have to get into this silly
philosophical thing, since a post implied ethereal or a packet sniffer
*shouldn't* do it, so I think some people don't get it.

Somebody posted writing as if this was some personal problem Will has,
requesting they email in private (perhaps since he writes software and
sells it). OK. But It is not just his thing. It's as he described it.
A general thing.

I notice also xananews tried to set follow-up to
comp.dcom.net-management , so if anybody uses that, then be careful!

Posted by Will on October 14, 2007, 5:00 am
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> Will wrote:
> > Can someone recommend a sniffer for Windows that will show the
> > process ID and name of the process sending or receiving each packet
> > shown in the sniffer?
> >
> > I normally use ethereal or wireshark and didn't see a straightforward
> > way to include this information.
>
> this is indeed a noble search ! I have looked for the same thing
> myself.
>
> netstat can see process id, but only offers a snapshot, it's
> stateless, and as a result of it only doing a snapshot, it doesn't
> record whether the packet is incoming or outgoing. And of course it's
> only a snapshot style port status thing.
>
> You said something like TCPView do what you want ""if you had the
> patience of a saint?" But from what I remember, TCPView is not a packet
> sniffer. You never see inside the packet.
>
> I did find a port logger (software running on the machine of course,
> it's necessary for this) that records process id , and whether the
> packet is incoming or outgoing. But it's not a packet sniffer.
> Sygate personal firewall, probably the last free version. Maybe
> available from oldversion.com or elsewhere. You can turn off the
> firewall feature leaving just the port logger. Though the last time i
> installed it it crashed, maybe blocking outgoing , and so I removed it
> and haven't tried it since.
>
> Somebody should really write what you suggest. It'd be only a small
> addition to Ethereal.

Can you expand on that last thought? Are you saying the developers of
Ethereal could do this easily, or did you mean that there is some add-on API
for Wireshark that would let us add this in?

--
Will



Posted by jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk on October 14, 2007, 12:40 pm
If you were  Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Will wrote:
> > > Can someone recommend a sniffer for Windows that will show the
> > > process ID and name of the process sending or receiving each packet
> > > shown in the sniffer?
>
> > > I normally use ethereal or wireshark and didn't see a straightforward
> > > way to include this information.
>
> > this is indeed a noble search ! I have looked for the same thing
> > myself.
>
> > netstat can see process id, but only offers a snapshot, it's
> > stateless, and as a result of it only doing a snapshot, it doesn't
> > record whether the packet is incoming or outgoing. And of course it's
> > only a snapshot style port status thing.
>
> > You said something like TCPView do what you want ""if you had the
> > patience of a saint?" But from what I remember, TCPView is not a packet
> > sniffer. You never see inside the packet.
>
> > I did find a port logger (software running on the machine of course,
> > it's necessary for this) that records process id , and whether the
> > packet is incoming or outgoing. But it's not a packet sniffer.
> > Sygate personal firewall, probably the last free version. Maybe
> > available from oldversion.com or elsewhere. You can turn off the
> > firewall feature leaving just the port logger. Though the last time i
> > installed it it crashed, maybe blocking outgoing , and so I removed it
> > and haven't tried it since.
>
> > Somebody should really write what you suggest. It'd be only a small
> > addition to Ethereal.
>
> Can you expand on that last thought? Are you saying the developers of
> Ethereal could do this easily, or did you mean that there is some add-on API
> for Wireshark that would let us add this in?
>

I don't know C/C++ , but I'm saying that for developers it'd be easy.

netstat is a tiny program and does it.
sygate firewall had a very simple port logger program that did it.

So there would be an API. Not for Wireshark. But an API - presumably a
windows or linux one - that can be accessed by the language that
wireshark is written in. Wireshark or any program could access it.


when I say "did it", netstat or sygate firewall did it, i'm referring
to knowing it for 'connections'. Essentially that means it knows it
for packets. Worst case scenario, this shows that if sitting on a
client or server, the software can only know the process id when one
process is used for the entire connection(i've never even see more
than one used anyway. So even for a worst case scenario, 1 process is
a fair assumption to make). One doesn't know if one doesn't try it.
But either way, reasoning shows it's a simple , small thing.



Posted by Vernon Schryver on October 14, 2007, 3:07 pm
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>> > Somebody should really write what you suggest. It'd be only a small
>> > addition to Ethereal.
>>
>> Can you expand on that last thought? Are you saying the developers of
>> Ethereal could do this easily, or did you mean that there is some add-on API
>> for Wireshark that would let us add this in?
>>
>
>I don't know C/C++ , but I'm saying that for developers it'd be easy.

If you "don't know C/C++", how can you imagine that you might have any
idea what is easy or hard?


>netstat is a tiny program and does it.
>sygate firewall had a very simple port logger program that did it.
>
>So there would be an API. Not for Wireshark. But an API - presumably a
>windows or linux one - that can be accessed by the language that
>wireshark is written in. Wireshark or any program could access it.
>
>when I say "did it", netstat or sygate firewall did it, i'm referring
>to knowing it for 'connections'. Essentially that means it knows it
>for packets. Worst case scenario, this shows that if sitting on a
>client or server, the software can only know the process id when one
>process is used for the entire connection(i've never even see more
>than one used anyway. So even for a worst case scenario, 1 process is
>a fair assumption to make). One doesn't know if one doesn't try it.
>But either way, reasoning shows it's a simple , small thing.

That so called "reasoning" is silly nonsense based on willful ignorance.


You can write code to relate TCP or UDP connections to processes IDs by

1. look at all sockets (or equivalent) in the system and their
associated TSBs or other "connection" information until you find
the connection you care about based in its (addr,port,add,port)
4-tuple (or equivalent for a protocol other than TCP or UDP).

This is equivalent to `netstat -naA` on many systems.

2. look at all file descriptors (or equivalent) in the system until
you find one associated with the socket from step #1. Except
for wierd special cases in some systems, each file descriptor
will be owned by one *or more* prcoesses, which gives you your
PIDs (plural).
I often use `netstat -naA` and then `fstat | grep xxhexxxxx`

That works because every connection needs to be associated with a socket
(or equivalent) so that the system knows what to do with incoming
packets. Every socket needs to be associated with processes so that
the system knows to destroy the socket at the end the last process that
cares about it.

Packets (in non-trivial systems) are a whole other kettle of fish.
Processes do things such as sendto() system calls that dump packets
into queues to be sent and forget them. Packets need to last in the
system only until they are put on the wire. In normal situations, there
is no reason to spend the CPU cycles or memory that would be required
to remember which process created each packet sitting in a queue to be
sent.

The supposed "simple, small thing" of being able to find the process
that sent a packet is either the large thing of changing the operating
syustem to maintain PIDs or pointers in mbufs (or equivalents) or the
not so small thing of inserting a shim between all applications on the
system and all system calls that can send packets, and having the shim
maintain enough state (or logs) so that it can guess and pick a process
that probably sent a given packet. Other people have mentioned packages
that sound to me as if they do the latter.


Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com

Posted by Will on October 14, 2007, 5:16 pm
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> Packets (in non-trivial systems) are a whole other kettle of fish.
> Processes do things such as sendto() system calls that dump packets
> into queues to be sent and forget them. Packets need to last in the
> system only until they are put on the wire. In normal situations, there
> is no reason to spend the CPU cycles or memory that would be required
> to remember which process created each packet sitting in a queue to be
> sent.
>
> The supposed "simple, small thing" of being able to find the process
> that sent a packet is either the large thing of changing the operating
> syustem to maintain PIDs or pointers in mbufs (or equivalents) or the
> not so small thing of inserting a shim between all applications on the
> system and all system calls that can send packets, and having the shim
> maintain enough state (or logs) so that it can guess and pick a process
> that probably sent a given packet. Other people have mentioned packages
> that sound to me as if they do the latter.

So the quick summary would be: tracking the process ID in a sniffer would
be relatively easy for connection oriented protocols like TCP since the
Windows OS has data structures that give strong clues about the sender and
receiver that could be parsed to match on address/port of sender and
receiver. Of course this approach would miss the rogue application that
fakes packets and tries to make them appear to come from a different
process. But it is a lot more than what we have today and would be very
useful.

The tracking of process ID in a sniffer would be extremely difficult for
datagrams since it would require either enhancements to the OS or the
installation of traps or filters for all of the various OS calls that allow
a datagram to be sent. Such filtering to track process IDs has overhead
associated with it, so it might be something that you would only want to
make active during a sniffer session.

Did you look at the MicroOlap Sniffer SDK another poster had mentioned at
http://www.microolap.com? Did you have any opinion on it?

--
Will



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