The world`s foremost network protocol analyzer for Windows

Wireshark (64-bit)

Wireshark (64-bit)

  -  91.4 MB  -  Freeware
  • Latest Version

    Wireshark 4.6.0 (64-bit) LATEST

  • Review by

    Daniel Leblanc

  • Operating System

    Windows 8 (64-bit) / Windows 10 (64-bit) / Windows 11

  • User Rating

    Click to vote
  • Author / Product

    Wireshark Foundation / External Link

  • Filename

    Wireshark-4.6.0-x64.exe

The Ethereal network protocol analyzer has changed its name to Wireshark 64-bit. The name might be new, but the software is the same. Wireshark's powerful features make it the tool of choice for network troubleshooting, protocol development, and education worldwide.

An open-source network protocol analyzer that lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.

Originally named Ethereal, it was rebranded as Wireshark in 2006 and has since become a go-to tool for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communication protocol development, and education. It's available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems.

The app was written by networking experts around the world and is an example of the power of open-source. Wireshark 64-bit is used by network professionals around the world for analysis, troubleshooting, software and protocol development, and education.

The program has all of the standard features you would expect in a protocol analyzer, and several features not seen in any other product. Its open source license allows talented experts in the networking community to add enhancements.

Highlights
  • Deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with more being added all the time
  • Live capture and offline analysis
  • Standard three-pane packet browser
  • Multi-platform: Runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and many others
  • Captured network data can be browsed via a GUI, or via the TTY-mode TShark utility
  • The most powerful display filters in the industry
  • Rich VoIP analysis
  • Read/write many different capture file formats: tcpdump (libpcap), Pcap NG, Catapult DCT2000, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, Microsoft Network Monitor, Network General Sniffer® (compressed and uncompressed), Sniffer® Pro, and NetXray®, Network Instruments Observer, NetScreen snoop, Novell LANalyzer, RADCOM WAN/LAN Analyzer, Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor, Tektronix K12xx, Visual Networks Visual UpTime, WildPackets EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek, and many others
  • Capture files compressed with gzip can be decompressed on the fly
  • Live data can be read from Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM, Bluetooth, USB, Token Ring, Frame Relay, FDDI, and others (depending on your platform)
  • Decryption support for many protocols, including IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2
  • Coloring rules can be applied to the packet list for quick, intuitive analysis
  • Output can be exported to XML, PostScript®, CSV, or plain text
Features
  • Packet Analysis: It captures data packets from a network in real-time or from saved capture files for in-depth analysis.
  • Deep Inspection: Users can inspect hundreds of protocols, including Ethernet, IP, TCP, HTTP, DNS, and more, to diagnose network issues or investigate security incidents.
  • Filtering: Advanced filtering capabilities allow users to sift through large volumes of data to focus on specific packets or protocols.
  • Protocol Decoding: The app decodes packet contents into human-readable formats, aiding in understanding network communication.
  • VoIP Analysis: Support for VoIP protocols enables analysis of voice and video communications.
  • Exporting: Captured data can be exported to various file formats for further analysis or sharing.
  • Extensibility: It offers a rich ecosystem of plugins and scripts for extending functionality.
User Interface

It features a comprehensive graphical user interface (GUI) with multiple panes for packet display, packet details, packet list, and more. It provides color-coded packet highlighting for easy identification of various protocols and types of traffic.

Installation and Setup

Installing this program is straightforward on most platforms. Users can download the installer from the official website or FileHorse and follow the on-screen instructions. On Windows, it also offers an option to install WinPcap or Npcap for packet capture.

How to Use
  • Launch the tool and select the network interface for capturing packets.
  • Start capturing packets by clicking the "Start" button.
  • Analyze captured packets in real-time or from saved capture files.
  • Apply filters to focus on specific packets or protocols.
  • Use built-in tools for deep packet inspection, protocol decoding, and analysis.
  • Export relevant data for further investigation or reporting.
FAQ

Can Wireshark 64bit capture encrypted traffic?
It can capture encrypted traffic, but it cannot decrypt it unless the user has access to the encryption keys.

Does Wireshark support wireless network capture?
Yes, it supports capturing packets from wireless networks, but it requires compatible hardware and drivers.

Is Wireshark legal to use?
Yes, the software is legal to use for network analysis and troubleshooting. However, using it for unauthorized interception of network traffic may be illegal in some jurisdictions.

Can Wireshark be used for cybersecurity purposes?
Yes, the program is commonly used by cybersecurity professionals for analyzing network traffic, detecting anomalies, and investigating security incidents.

What are some common troubleshooting scenarios where Wireshark is useful?
It can help troubleshoot network connectivity issues, performance problems, security breaches, and application communication errors, among others.

Pricing

Thge tool is open-source and available for FREE under the GNU General Public License.

System Requirements

The program is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems. System requirements vary depending on the platform and usage scenario but generally include a reasonable amount of RAM and disk space for packet capture and analysis.

PROS
  • Comprehensive protocol support
  • Extensive filtering and analysis capabilities
  • Open-source and free
  • Active community and ongoing development
  • Cross-platform compatibility
CONS
  • Steep learning curve for beginners
  • Requires understanding of networking concepts
  • Limited support for decrypting encrypted traffic
  • Resource-intensive for capturing and analyzing large data volumes
Also Available: Wireshark (32-bit), Wireshark for Mac and Wireshark Portable


Why is this app published on FileHorse? (More info)
  • Wireshark 4.6.0 (64-bit) Screenshots

    The images below have been resized. Click on them to view the screenshots in full size.

    Wireshark 4.6.0 (64-bit) Screenshot 1
  • Wireshark 4.6.0 (64-bit) Screenshot 2
  • Wireshark 4.6.0 (64-bit) Screenshot 3
  • Wireshark 4.6.0 (64-bit) Screenshot 4
  • Wireshark 4.6.0 (64-bit) Screenshot 5

What's new in this version:

New and Updated Features:
The following features are new (or have been significantly updated) since version 4.6.0rc1:
- Wireshark can dissect process information, packet metadata, flow IDs, drop information, and other information provided by tcpdump on macOS

The following features are either new or have been significantly updated since version 4.4.0:
- The Windows installers now ship with Npcap 1.83. They previously shipped with Npcap 1.79.
- The Windows and macOS installers now ship with Qt 6.9.3. They previously shipped with Qt 6.5.3.
- We now ship universal macOS installers instead of separate packages for Arm64 and Intel
- WinPcap is no longer supported. On Windows, use Npcap instead, uninstalling WinPcap if necessary. The final release of WinPcap was version 4.1.3 in 2013. It only supports up to Windows 8, which is no longer supported by Microsoft or Wireshark.
- A new “Plots” dialog has been added, which provides scatter plots in contrast to the “I/O Graphs” dialog, which provides histograms. The Plots dialog window supports multiple plots, markers, and automatic scrolling.
- Live captures can be compressed while writing. (Previously there was support for compressing when performing multiple file capture, at file rotation time.) The --compress option in TShark works on live captures as well
- Absolute time fields, regardless of field display in the Packet Details, are always written in ISO 8601 format in UTC with -T json. This was already the case for -T ek since version 4.2.0. JSON is primarily a data interchange format read by software, so a standard format is desirable.
- When absolute times field are output with -T fields, the "show" field of -T pdml, or in custom columns (including CSV output of columns), the formatting similar to asctime (e.g., Dec 18, 2017 05:28:39.071704055 EST) has been deprecated in favor of ISO 8601. For backwards compatibility, a preference has been added, protocols.display_abs_time_ascii, which can be set to continue to format times as before. This preference can also be set to never use ASCII time and to use ISO 8601 time formatting in the protocol tree (Packet Details) as well. It is possible that a future release will remove the ascitime style formatting entirely.
- UTC frame time column formats (including "Time (format as specified)" when a UTC time display format is selected) have a "Z" suffix per ISO 8601. Local time formats remain unqualified (including if the local time zone is UTC.) Custom columns displaying FT_ABSOLUTE_TIME already had time zone indication.
- The TShark -G option for generating glossary reports does not need to be the first option given on the command line anymore. In addition, the reports now are affected by other command line options such as -o, -d, and --disable-protocol, in addition to the -C option, which was already supported. (The defaultprefs report remains unaffected by any other options.) As a part of this change, -G with no argument, which was previously deprecated, is no longer supported. Use tshark -G fields to produce the same report. Also, the syntax for only listing fields with a certain prefix has changed to tshark -G fields,prefix.
- The underlying type of EUI-64 fields has been switched to bytes when packet matching, similar to most other address formats. This means that EUI-64 addresses can be sliced and compared to other bytes types, e.g. the filter wpan.src64[:3] == eth.src[:3]. Fields can still be specified using 64-bit unsigned integer literals, though arithmetic with other integers is no longer supported.
- Wireshark can now decrypt NTP packets using NTS (Network Time Security). To decrypt packets, the NTS-KE (Network Time Security Key Establishment Protocol) packets need to be present, alongside the TLS client and exporter secrets. Additionally, the parts of a NTP packet which can be cryptographically authenticated (from NTP packet header until the end of the last extension field that precedes the NTS Authenticator and Encrypted Extension Fields extension field) are checked for validity.
- Wireshark’s ability to decrypt MACsec packets has been expanded to either use the SAK unwrapped by the MKA dissector, or the PSK configured in the MACsec dissector. To enable the MKA dissector to unwrap the SAK, the CAK for the applicable CKN can be entered in the extended CKN/CAK Info UAT in the MKA dissector preferences. The ability of the MACsec dissector to decrypt packets using a PSK has been extended to a list of PSKs, which can entered through a new UAT.
- The TCP Stream Graph axes now use units with SI prefixes
- Custom columns have an option to show the values using the same format as in Packet Details.
- Custom column complex expressions (e.g., with arithmetic, filter functions, etc.) that return numeric results are sorted numerically instead of lexicographically.
- Display filter functions float and double are added to allow explicitly converting field types like integers and times to single and double precision floats. They can be used to perform further arithmetic operations on fields of different types, including in custom column definitions.
- The minimum width of the I/O Graph dialog window has been reduced, so it should work better on small resolution desktops, especially in certain languages. To enable this, some checkbox controls were moved to the graph right-click context menu
- X.509 certificates, used in TLS and elsewhere, can be exported via the File › Export Objects menu in Wireshark (under the name "X509AF") and --export-objects in TShark (with the protocol name x509af.)
- Zstandard Content-Encoding is supported in the HTTP and HTTP/2 dissectors.
- Follow Stream is supported for MPEG 2 Transport Stream PIDs, and for Packetized Elementary Streams contained within MPEG 2 TS. The latter can be used to extract audio or video for playback with other tools.
- DNP 3 (Distributed Network Protocol 3) is now supported in the Conversations and Endpoints table dialogs.
- The Lua supplied preloaded libraries bit and rex_pcre2 are loaded in a way that adds them to the package.loaded table, as though through require, so that require("bit") and require("rex_pcre2") statements in Lua dissectors, while usually superfluous, behave as expected
- The packet list (Wireshark) and event list (Stratoshark) no longer support rows with multiple lines
- The ethers file can also contain EUI-64 to name mappings
- Wireshark’s "Import from Hex Dump" feature and text2pcap now support byte groups with 2 to 4 bytes (with an option for little-endian byte order), and support hexadecimal offsets with a 0x or 0X prefix (as produced by tcpdump -x, among others)
- Frame timestamps can be added as preamble to hex dumps in Wireshark from the "Print" and "Export Packet Dissection" dialogs, and in TShark with the --hexdump time option
- Lua now has a Conversation object, which exposes conversations and conversation data to Lua
- An Edit › Copy › as HTML menu item has been added, along with associated context menu items and a keyboard shortcut. It provides an option (via knobs in preferences) to copy plain text with aligned columns along with an ability to select a copy format to be used when copied via keyboard shortcut.
- The "no duplicate keys" version of JSON output that tshark has supported since 2.6.0 is available through the GUI Export Dissections Dialog. Note that this format does not necessarily preserve the ordering of all children in a tree, if sibling with identical keys are not consecutive.
- The GUI Export Dissections Dialog can output raw hex bytes of the frame data for each field with or without exporting the field values, the same formats as the "-T json -x" and "-T jsonraw" output modes, respectively, of TShark.
- The Conversations and Endpoints dialogs have an option to display byte counts and bit rates in exact counts instead of human-readable numbers with SI units. The default setting when opening a dialog is controlled by a Statistics preference, "conv.machine_readable". The same preference controls whether precise byte counts are used in the TShark "-z conv" and "-z endpoints" taps.
- The output format for some TShark statistics taps (those selected with "-z tap,tree", which use the stats_tree system) can be controlled via a preference "-o statistics.output_format".
- The color scheme can be set to Light or Dark mode independently of the current OS default on Windows and macOS, if Wireshark is built with Qt 6.8 or later as the official installers are
- libxml2 is now a required dependency. Note that Wireshark will not build with libxml2 2.15.0, but other versions should work.
- The View menu has an option to Redissect Packets manually, which can be useful when address resolution or decryption secrets have changed.
- HTTP2 tracking of 3GPP session over 5G Service Based Interfaces is now optional available. When enabled "Associate IMSI" will be add on HTTP2 streams which has been found belong to a session.
- Building the documentation on Windows no longer requires Java.
- On Linux, capture filters that use BPF extensions like "inbound", "outbound", and "ifindex" can be used for capturing (and compiled by the Compiled Filter dialog). Instead of always being rejected by the syntax checker, they will be marked as unknown.

Removed Features and Support
- Wireshark no longer supports AirPcap and WinPcap
- Wireshark no longer supports libnl versions 1 or 2
- The ENABLE_STATIC CMake option has been deprecated in favor of BUILD_SHARED_LIBS