RIOT/examples/sniffer/tools

RIOT Sniffer Application

About

This sniffer script can be used to monitor and capture network traffic using a RIOT based node. It is primarily designed for sniffing wireless data traffic, but can also well be used for wired network traffic, as long as used network devices support promiscuous mode and output of raw data.

The python script sniffer.py requires a RIOT node running the sniffer app, its source code is located in this repository (see main folder). This node outputs received network traffic via a serial port or a network socket in the common Wireshark/libpcap (pcap) format. This output is then parsed by the sniffer.py script included in this folder run on a host computer.

The sniffer.py script is a modified version of malvira's script for the Redbee Ecotag (https://github.com/malvira/libmc1322x/wiki/wireshark).

Dependencies

The sniffer.py script is written in Python and needs pyserial.

Installing the dependencies:

Debuntu

apt-get install python-serial

PIP

pip install pyserial

Usage

General usage:

1. Flash an applicable RIOT node with the sniffer application (insert path to RIOT source and board name), as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/RIOT-OS/applications/
$ cd applications/sniffer
$ BOARD=<name> make clean all flash

2. Run the sniffer.py script (change to subfolder tools/) as follows : For serial port:

$ ./sniffer.py [-b baudrate] <tty> <channel> [outfile]

For network socket:

$ ./sniffer.py <host>:<port> <channel> [outfile]

You should see output like below:

ifconfig 3 set chan 26
ifconfig 3 raw
ifconfig 3 promisc
RX: 0

For detailed information on the parameters use the scripts on-line help:

./sniffer.py -h

Examples

The following examples are made when using the sniffer application together with an iotlab-m3 node that is connected to /dev/ttyUSB1(or COM1) (serial connection type) and runs per default with a baudrate of 500000. For the socket connection type port 20000 is used.

Linux (serial)

Dump packets to a file:

$ ./sniffer.py -b 500000 /dev/ttyUSB1 17 foo.pcap

This .pcap can then be opened in Wireshark.

Alternatively for live captures, you can pipe directly into Wireshark with:

$ ./sniffer.py -b 500000 /dev/ttyUSB1 17 | wireshark -k -i -

Windows (serial)

For windows you can use the optional third argument to output to a .pcap:

$ ./sniffer.py -b 500000 COM1 17 foo.pcap

IoT-Lab Testbed (socket)

Start an experiment either via the website provided by the IoT-Lab testbed or by using the RIOT specific iotlab Makefile with 3 neighboring iotlab-m3 nodes, where one of them runs the sniffer application and the others run the gnrc_networking application.

Now you can bind the sniffer node to localhost: ssh -L 20000:node-id:20000 user@site.iot-lab.info

Then you can dump or observe the traffic generated by the other nodes running the gnrc_networking application via one of the following commands:

$ ./sniffer.py localhost:20000 26 foo.pcap
$ ./sniffer.py localhost:20000 26 | wireshark -k -i -