Huge thanks to our Platinum Members Endace and LiveAction,
and our Silver Member Veeam, for supporting the Wireshark Foundation and project.

Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] "Decode Selected Bytes As"

From: "Graeme Lunt" <graeme.lunt@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 09:10:41 +0100
Stig,

I have some ASN.1 captures with a octetstring containing another ASN.
1 block.
This is shown as:

  OCTETSTRING: 308204CE81...

I would really like to have a "Decode Selected Bytes As" function to
dissect this block as ASN.1 without having to "Export Selected Packet
Bytes..." to another file and then have to open this file.  Any ideas
how this could be implemented?

This must be the case where there is nothing else in the ASN.1 file
that can give you a hint as to how to decode the OCTETSTRING I guess.

A couple of things spring to mind:
1) as a preference, "auto-detect" ASN.1 when decoding BER OCTETSTRINGs
and dissect as unknown BER.
2) Add a menu item - "Decode Bytes in New Window" - which would bring
up something like "Show Packet in New Window" - but just decoding the
selected bytes as BER.

Is it possible to add another entry to the Packet List after such a
dissection?

I guess it is possible, but it would need some communication between
the dissector and the BER wtap.

Graeme