In this section, we'll take a look at installing Wireshark on Windows and installing Wireshark on macOS and Linux.
You will need to perform the following steps:
- Go to the https://www.wireshark.org/ web page:
- When you get there, scroll down on the home page and click on
Download. - The latest version of Wireshark will be visible. Select the installer for the version of Windows that you are currently running.
Note
Most people on a modern computer, on a modern version of Windows, will be running 64-bit.
If you happen to be running an older version of Windows on 32-bit or older hardware, make sure you select the 32-bit version. If you're not sure which one to use, do the following:
Open your Control Panel, go to System and Security, and click on the System link. In the System section, you'll see that it says System type: 64-bit Operating System. If you have a 32-bit, it'll show that here as well.
- Read the
License Agreement, click onI Agree, and select the features of Wireshark that you wish to include. Most people include all of the defaults. You'll see here that we have the main Wireshark application; we have the classic interface version of Wireshark; and we haveTShark, which is a command-line version of running Wireshark; as well as some plugins, theUser's Guide, and some additional tools:
- Go ahead and click on
Next, and select a location for Wireshark to install. We'll select the defaults here as well.
- And on the next page here, it says:
Install WinPcap?If you don't have WinPcap installed, leave that checked and it will install it as part of the install process:
Note
WinPcap is the driver that allows Wireshark to interface with your network card. WinPcap is required for it to be able to view all the packets.
- Click on
Next.
Note
You can also install USBPcap, which allows you to view the traffic on a USB connection. Most people won't need this, so we'll leave that unchecked.
- Go ahead and click on
Installand Wireshark will now install. - Partway through the install, the WinPcap installer will then run, and we'll go ahead and click on
Next. - Read the
License Agreementand click onI Agree. You can then decide whether or not you want the WinPcap driver to run at boot time. Most people allow it to do so. We'll leave that as default, and click onInstall. - That will finish very quickly; then click on
Finish. - The Wireshark install will then continue. When the text window says completed, go ahead and click
Next; and then you can select whether or not you want to run Wireshark at that moment, and click onFinish.
Once the Wireshark GUI loads up, you are done:
In the next section, we'll go over how to install Wireshark on macOS and Linux.
To install Wireshark on macOS, perform the following steps:
- Start by going to the https://www.wireshark.org/ web page.
- When you're on the web page, scroll down on the main page, and click on
Download. The latest version of Wireshark will be displayed. - Go down to
macOS 10.6 and later Intel 64-bit .dmg, and click on it to download:
- At this point, we can choose to save the file to our
Downloadsfolder and then open it, or simply open it directly off the web page with theDiskImageMounter (default). - Go ahead and click on
OK. It downloads the file and opens it up.
- We can then double-click on the
PKGfile, and click onContinue:
- Read the
License Agreementand click onContinueagain, and then onAgreeto indicate that you agree to the license agreement.
- Click on
Install. - Enter your administrator credentials and click on
Install Software. - Once the installation is successful, click on
Close.
Once Wireshark is up and running, that's it—you're done.
Installing Wireshark on Linux will differ, based on the distribution that you're using. Here, I'm using one of the most common distributions available: Ubuntu. In order to install Wireshark, perform the following steps:
- We'll go to the Ubuntu software application; go ahead and click on that and we'll search for
synaptic:
Note
Synaptic is a package manager similar to the Ubuntu software application, but it gives you more control.
- Simply click on
Install; enter your administrator password (your root password) and the software will be installed:
- Go ahead and click on
Synaptic Package Managerto open that up. Enter in our credentials again, and now we have our Synaptic application loaded:
- So we'll select that; click on that, and select
Mark for Installation. It will then ask you if it's okay to install other packages that are required. We can say sure, that's fine;Markthem for installation as well. So now all of our dependencies will be installed, as well:
Note
At this point, you'll receive a window popup asking you if non-superusers should be able to capture packets. I would recommend selecting Yes. That will allow you to separate your root user from your standard users, but still allow you, as a standard user, to capture packets.
- Once everything is complete, you'll receive a
Changes appliedwindow. It'll say:Successfully applied all changes. You can now close the window. - Simply click on
Close, and you'll see everything here marked in green is now installed, including Wireshark:
- So, at this point, we can close this program as well as the Ubuntu software. Next, click on the
Searchbutton in the upper left corner of the interface, and we'll type inwireshark. It automatically shows that Wireshark is here. We can simply click on that and it will load Wireshark. - At this point, once Wireshark loads, you're done.
In this chapter, you've learned how to install Wireshark on both macOS and Linux—specifically, Ubuntu.
In Chapter 2, Getting Started with Wireshark, we are going to take a look at what's new in Wireshark 2, capturing traffic, saving and exporting packets, annotating and printing packets, remote capture setup, and remote capture usage.
