How To Open A .cap File
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Using the packet capture feature of Network Watcher, you can initiate and manage captures sessions on your Azure VMs from the portal, PowerShell, CLI, and programmatically through the SDK and REST API. Packet capture allows you to address scenarios that require packet level data by providing the information in a readily usable format. Leveraging freely available tools to inspect the data, you can examine communications sent to and from your VMs and gain insights into your network traffic. Some example uses of packet capture data include: investigating network or application issues, detecting network misuse and intrusion attempts, or maintaining regulatory compliance. In this article, we show how to open a packet capture file provided by Network Watcher using a popular open source tool. We will also provide examples showing how to calculate a connection latency, identify abnormal traffic, and examine networking statistics.
Before you begin
.CAP file is associated with Packet Capture File developed by N/A, has a N/A Format and belongs to Data Files category. How to open a.CAP file? Execute.CAP file by double-clicking on it. If you have already installed the software to open it and the files associations are set up correctly,.CAP file will be opened.
This article goes through some pre-configured scenarios on a packet capture that was run previously. These scenarios illustrate capabilities that can be accessed by reviewing a packet capture. This scenario uses WireShark to inspect the packet capture.
This scenario assumes you already ran a packet capture on a virtual machine. To learn how to create a packet capture visit Manage packet captures with the portal or with REST by visiting Managing Packet Captures with REST API.
Scenario
In this scenario, you:
- Review a packet capture
Calculate network latency
In this scenario, we show how to view the initial Round Trip Time (RTT) of a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) conversation occurring between two endpoints.
In the following table, you can find a list of programs that can open files with.cap extension.This list is created by collecting extension information reported by users through the 'send report' option of FileTypesMan utility. The product name, description, and company name are taken from the version information of the.exe file.The 'Actions' list is taken from the context menu items added. How to open CAP files. If you cannot open the CAP file on your computer - there may be several reasons. The first and most important reason (the most common) is the lack of a suitable software that supports CAP among those that are installed on your device. A very simple way to solve this problem is to find and download the appropriate application. I have a huge pcap file (generated by tcpdump). When I try to open it in wireshark, the program just gets unresponsive. Is there a way to split a file in set of smaller ones to open them one by one? The traffic captured in a file is generated by two programs on two servers, so I can't split the file using tcpdump 'host' or 'port' filters. To open a CAP file in Capstone follow these steps: Select File → Open Experiment. Navigate to the location of the CAP file and select it.
When a TCP connection is established, the first three packets sent in the connection follow a pattern commonly referred to as the three-way handshake. By examining the first two packets sent in this handshake, an initial request from the client and a response from the server, we can calculate the latency when this connection was established. This latency is referred to as the Round Trip Time (RTT). For more information on the TCP protocol and the three-way handshake refer to the following resource. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/172983/explanation-of-the-three-way-handshake-via-tcp-ip
Step 1
Launch WireShark
Step 2
Load the .cap file from your packet capture. This file can be found in the blob it was saved in our locally on the virtual machine, depending on how you configured it.
Step 3
To view the initial Round Trip Time (RTT) in TCP conversations, we will only be looking at the first two packets involved in the TCP handshake. We will be using the first two packets in the three-way handshake, which are the [SYN], [SYN, ACK] packets. They are named for flags set in the TCP header. The last packet in the handshake, the [ACK] packet, will not be used in this scenario. The [SYN] packet is sent by the client. Once it is received the server sends the [ACK] packet as an acknowledgment of receiving the SYN from the client. Leveraging the fact that the server’s response requires very little overhead, we calculate the RTT by subtracting the time the [SYN, ACK] packet was received by the client by the time [SYN] packet was sent by the client.
Using WireShark this value is calculated for us.
To more easily view the first two packets in the TCP three-way handshake, we will utilize the filtering capability provided by WireShark.
To apply the filter in WireShark, expand the “Transmission Control Protocol” Segment of a [SYN] packet in your capture and examine the flags set in the TCP header.
Since we are looking to filter on all [SYN] and [SYN, ACK] packets, under flags confirm that the Syn bit is set to 1, then right click on the Syn bit -> Apply as Filter -> Selected.
Step 4
Now that you have filtered the window to only see packets with the [SYN] bit set, you can easily select conversations you are interested in to view the initial RTT. A simple way to view the RTT in WireShark simply click the dropdown marked “SEQ/ACK” analysis. You will then see the RTT displayed. In this case, the RTT was 0.0022114 seconds, or 2.211 ms.
Unwanted protocols
You can have many applications running on a virtual machine instance you have deployed in Azure. Many of these applications communicate over the network, perhaps without your explicit permission. Using packet capture to store network communication, we can investigate how application are talking on the network and look for any issues.
In this example, we review a previous ran packet capture for unwanted protocols that may indicate unauthorized communication from an application running on your machine.
Step 1
Using the same capture in the previous scenario click Statistics > Protocol Hierarchy
The protocol hierarchy window appears. This view provides a list of all the protocols that were in use during the capture session and the number of packets transmitted and received using the protocols. This view can be useful for finding unwanted network traffic on your virtual machines or network.
As you can see in the following screen capture, there was traffic using the BitTorrent protocol, which is used for peer to peer file sharing. As an administrator you do not expect to see BitTorrent traffic on this particular virtual machines. Now you aware of this traffic, you can remove the peer to peer software that installed on this virtual machine, or block the traffic using Network Security Groups or a Firewall. Additionally, you may elect to run packet captures on a schedule, so you can review the protocol use on your virtual machines regularly. For an example on how to automate network tasks in azure visit Monitor network resources with azure automation
Finding top destinations and ports
Understanding the types of traffic, the endpoints, and the ports communicated over is an important when monitoring or troubleshooting applications and resources on your network. Utilizing a packet capture file from above, we can quickly learn the top destinations our VM is communicating with and the ports being utilized.
Step 1
Using the same capture in the previous scenario click Statistics > IPv4 Statistics > Destinations and Ports
Step 2
As we look through the results a line stands out, there were multiple connections on port 111. The most used port was 3389, which is remote desktop, and the remaining are RPC dynamic ports.
While this traffic may mean nothing, it is a port that was used for many connections and is unknown to the administrator.
Step 3
Now that we have determined an out of place port we can filter our capture based on the port.
How To Open Cap File For Bios
The filter in this scenario would be:
We enter the filter text from above in the filter textbox and hit enter.
From the results, we can see all the traffic is coming from a local virtual machine on the same subnet. If we still don’t understand why this traffic is occurring, we can further inspect the packets to determine why it is making these calls on port 111. With this information we can take the appropriate action.
Next steps
How To Open A .cap File
Learn about the other diagnostic features of Network Watcher by visiting Azure network monitoring overview