JSONshark Project

by Wei Dai for Wireshark

In this project, we developed a web application based on tshark commands, so that users can remotely capture packets or open raw packet data files through browsers. Users may also dissect and parse the captured packets. Relevant detailed information of the packets will thus be shown in the browser. This application is composed of three parts, the front end, the Node.js back end and the wrapper based on tshark commands. The front end (index.ejs) is responsible for sending user requests, displaying the captured and parsed packets. The node.js back end (app.js and echld.js) is responsible for handling user requests by calling the wrapper and communicating with the front end in real time through socket.io module. The wrapper (echldwrapper.h .cc, jsonparser.h .cc) is implemented as a c/c++ addon module for the node.js server, so that the back end can call tshark commands as sub-processes, and output the captured packets and parsed packet information as json messages. Functions in the wrapper are general enough to be extended for the echld module in wireshark, instead of only tshark commands.