Active2 months ago
You can't capture traffic of a COM port (serial Port) on Windows with Wireshark, as the capturing library (WinPcap) does not support this. What you need is a COM port sniffer for Windows.Please google that.
From time to time, I need to dump USB traffic under Windows, mostly to support hardware under Linux, so my primary goal is to produce dump files for protocol analysis.
For USB traffic, it seems that SniffUsb is the clear winner... It works under Windows XP (but not later) and has a much nicer GUI than earlier versions. It produces huge dump files, but everything is there.
However, my device is in fact a USB serial device, so I turned to Portmon which can sniff serial port traffic without the USB overhead.
Samuel Liew♦47.7k3737 gold badges121121 silver badges180180 bronze badges
dpavlindpavlin84722 gold badges77 silver badges1717 bronze badges
6 Answers
Personally, I'd use QEMU or KVM and instrument their USB passthrough code, and then use libusb to prototype the replacement driver in user space (this latter bit I've done before; writing USB device drivers in Python is fun!).
Peter Mortensen14.5k1919 gold badges8989 silver badges118118 bronze badges
Charles DuffyCharles Duffy194k2929 gold badges224224 silver badges281281 bronze badges
- Since people don't seem to realize it, Wireshark does monitor USB traffic and has a parser for it; but the catch is it only works under Linux. Wireshark on Windows will not do this.
- It may be possible to plug the USB device you want to monitor, along with a Linux machine (with Wireshark running) and your Windows machine and just use the USB device under Windows.
- Problem with the above? I don't know how the Linux machine or the Windows machine will detect each other.
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jamkomojamkomo
After five years waiting, now it's possible to sniff usb packets on windows
See http://desowin.org/usbpcap/tour.html for a quick tour. It works pretty well
albfanalbfan9,17711 gold badge4242 silver badges7070 bronze badges
USBSnoop works too - and is free.
Com Port Sniffer For Windows 7
Or, you could buy a USB to Ethernet converter and use whatever network sniffer you prefer to see the data.
Maxime5,93022 gold badges4040 silver badges4848 bronze badges
gbjbaanbgbjbaanb46.5k1010 gold badges9292 silver badges139139 bronze badges
Com Port Sniffer Software
Busdog, an open source project hosted on github, has worked well for me. It has a driver it installs to allow it to monitor USB communications. The config window allows you to reinstall or remove the device at any time.
You can select the USB device you want from an enumerated list. A nice feature is to have it automatically trace a new device that is plugged in:
Data communications to and from an SWR analyzer I was reverse engineering were captured flawlessly:
Kurt FitznerKurt Fitzner
Microsoft Message Analyzer can capture USB traffic as well, if download
RenatRenatDevice and Log File
parser from MS: link3,74611 gold badge1111 silver badges2323 bronze badges
protected by Community♦Jul 6 '14 at 17:09
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Free software serial port monitor, Com Rs232 sniffer with communication packet data analyzer. This monitoring utility can spy, capture, view, analyze, test com ports activity performing com port connection and traffic analysis with data acquisition and control. You can use this system as device interface testing tool, modem data transfer viewer and so on. Serial Monitor can be successfully used for monitoring data flow between serial devices and Windows application, debugging com port connections, developing, reverse-engineering and implementing serial protocol, serial device driver development, serial hardware development, research the functionality of any third-party software and hardware, testing software and hardware.Free Serial Port Monitor can be successfully used by programmers, beta-testers, software developers, hardware engineers, IT support specialists, industrial control personnel, SCADA software engineers, science technicians, systems integrators, consultants, lab experts, University students.