libpcap 1.10.0b15

About original LIBPCAP:

https://www.tcpdump.org

Anonymous Git is available via:

git clone git://bpf.tcpdump.org/libpcap

formerly from:

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Network Research Group <libpcap@ee.lbl.gov>

ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/old/libpcap-0.4a7.tar.Z

This directory contains source code for libpcap, a system-independent interface for user-level packet capture. libpcap provides a portable framework for low-level network monitoring. Applications include network statistics collection, security monitoring, network debugging, etc. Since almost every system vendor provides a different interface for packet capture, and since we’ve developed several tools that require this functionality, we’ve created this system-independent API to ease in porting and to alleviate the need for several system-dependent packet capture modules in each application.

For some platforms there are README.{system} files that discuss issues with the OS’s interface for packet capture on those platforms, such as how to enable support for that interface in the OS, if it’s not built in by default.

The libpcap interface supports a filtering mechanism based on the architecture in the BSD packet filter. BPF is described in the 1993 Winter Usenix paper “The BSD Packet Filter: A New Architecture for User-level Packet Capture”. A compressed PostScript version can be found at:

ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/papers/bpf-usenix93.ps.Z

or:

https://www.tcpdump.org/papers/bpf-usenix93.ps.Z

and a gzipped version can be found at:

https://www.tcpdump.org/papers/bpf-usenix93.ps.gz

A PDF version can be found at:

https://www.tcpdump.org/papers/bpf-usenix93.pdf

Although most packet capture interfaces support in-kernel filtering, libpcap utilizes in-kernel filtering only for the BPF interface. On systems that don’t have BPF, all packets are read into user-space and the BPF filters are evaluated in the libpcap library, incurring added overhead (especially, for selective filters). Ideally, libpcap would translate BPF filters into a filter program that is compatible with the underlying kernel subsystem, but this is not yet implemented.

BPF is standard in 4.4BSD, BSD/OS, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and Mac OS X; an older, modified and undocumented version is standard in AIX. DEC OSF/1, Digital UNIX, Tru64 UNIX uses the packetfilter interface but has been extended to accept BPF filters (which libpcap utilizes). Also, you can add BPF filter support to Ultrix using the kernel source and/or object patches available in:

https://www.tcpdump.org/other/bpfext42.tar.Z

Linux, in the 2.2 kernel and later kernels, has a “Socket Filter” mechanism that accepts BPF filters; see the README.linux file for information on configuring that option.

Note to Linux distributions and *BSD systems that include libpcap:

There’s now a rule to make a shared library, which should work on Linux and *BSD, among other platforms.

It sets the soname of the library to “libpcap.so.1”; this is what it should be, NOT libpcap.so.1.x or libpcap.so.1.x.y or something such as that.

We’ve been maintaining binary compatibility between libpcap releases for quite a while; there’s no reason to tie a binary linked with libpcap to a particular release of libpcap.

Current versions can be found at: https://www.tcpdump.org

- The TCPdump group

1.10.0b15 (2020-10-18)

• Add support for Python 3.9.

• Drop support for Python 3.5.

• Removing dependence on atpublic.

• Ability to specify the backend programmatically.

• Establishing system’s libpcap as default backend.

• Fixed a critical setup bug (thank you very much msrst@Github!).

• General update and cleanup.

• Fixed docs setup.

1.10.0b10 (2020-01-16)

• Add support for Python 3.8.

• Drop support for Python 3.4.

• Drop support for Python 2.

• Upgrade to the latest libpcap API 1.10.0-PRE

• Establishing npcap as default backend.

• Internal npcap’s dll-s have been removed due to ev. license problems.

• Add support for Linux x64:

  add internal tcpdump’s libpcap.so v.1.9.1 with remote capture support.

  system’s tcpdump’s libpcap.so can also be used (via libpcap.libpcap.cfg).

• Added ReadTheDocs config file.

• Setup update and cleanup.

1.10.0b5 (2019-09-16)

• Upgrade to the latest libpcap API 1.10.0-PRE

• Upgrade npcap’s libpcap dll-s to the 0.996

• Minor setup fixes and improvements.

1.10.0b3 (2019-02-15)

• Upgrade to the latest libpcap API 1.10.0-PRE

• Upgrade npcap’s libpcap dll-s to the 0.99rc9

• Update required setuptools version.

• Minor setup improvements.

• Updates of tests.

1.10.0b1 (2018-11-08)

• Upgrade to the latest libpcap API 1.10.0-PRE

• Upgrade npcap’s libpcap dll-s to the 0.99rc7

• Update required setuptools version.

1.0.0b14 (2018-05-09)

• Update required setuptools version.

1.0.0b13 (2018-05-09)

• Upgrade npcap’s libpcap dll-s to the 0.99rc5

1.0.0b12 (2018-05-08)

• Upgrade to the latest libpcap.

1.0.0b10 (2018-03-31)

• Upgrade to the latest libpcap.

• Improve and simplify setup and packaging.

• Improve and update tests.

1.0.0b9 (2018-02-26)

• Improve and simplify setup and packaging.

1.0.0b8 (2018-02-25)

• Upgrade to the latest libpcap API 1.9.0

• Setup improvement.

1.0.0b7 (2017-12-18)

• Fix the error of platform detecting (thanks to Dan ???).

1.0.0b6 (2017-10-11)

• Upgrade to the libpcap API 1.9.0

1.0.0b5 (2017-10-08)

• Upgrade to the libpcap API 1.8.1

• Add support for libpcap from Npcap.

1.0.0b4 (2017-10-04)

• Fourth beta release.

1.0.0b3 (2017-08-28)

• Third beta release.

1.0.0b1 (2017-08-27)

• First beta release.

1.0.0a16 (2017-08-26)

• Next alpha release.

1.0.0a0 (2017-06-08)

• First alpha release.

0.0.1 (2016-09-23)

• Initial release.