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Wireshark 4.2.0rc3 Release Candidate

October 25, 2023

What’s New

Wireshark supports dark mode on Windows.

A Windows installer for Arm64 has been added.

Packet list sorting has been improved.

Wireshark and TShark are now better about generating valid UTF-8 output.

A new display filter feature for filtering raw bytes has been added.

Display filter autocomplete is smarter about not suggesting invalid syntax.

Tools › MAC Address Blocks can lookup a MAC address in the IEEE OUI registry.

The enterprises, manuf, and services configuration files have been compiled in for improved start-up times. These files are no longer available in the master branch in our source code repository. You can download the manuf file from our automated build directory.

The installation target no longer installs development headers by default.

The Wireshark installation is relocatable on Linux (and other ELF platforms with support for relative RPATHs).

Wireshark can be compiled on Windows using MSYS2. Check the Developer’s guide for instructions.

Wireshark can be cross-compiled for Windows using Linux. Check the Developer’s guide for instructions.

Tools › Browser (SSL Keylog) can launch your web browser with the SSLKEYLOGFILE environment variable set to the appropriate value.

Windows installer file names now have the format Wireshark-<version>-<architecture>.exe.

Many other improvements have been made. See the “New and Updated Features” section below for more details.

Bug Fixes

The following bugs have been fixed:

  • Issue 18413 - RTP player do not play audio frequently on Windows builds with Qt6.

  • Issue 18510 - Playback marker does not move after resume with Qt6.

New and Updated Features

The following features are new (or have been significantly updated) since version 4.2.0rc2:

  • The Windows installers now ship with Npcap 1.78. They previously shipped with Npcap 1.77.

The following features are new (or have been significantly updated) since version 4.2.0rc1:

  • The Windows installers now ship with Npcap 1.77. They previously shipped with Npcap 1.71.

The following features are new (or have been significantly updated) since version 4.1.0:

  • Improved dark mode support.

  • The Windows installers now ship with Qt 6.5.3. They previously shipped with Qt 6.2.3.

The following features are new (or have been significantly updated) since version 4.0.0:

  • The API has been updated to ensure that the dissection engine produces valid UTF-8 strings.

  • Wireshark now builds with Qt6 by default. To use Qt5 instead pass USE_qt6=OFF to CMake.

  • The "ciscodump" extcap supports Cisco IOS XE 17.x.

  • The default interval between GUI updates when capturing has been decreased from 500ms to 100ms, and is now configurable.

  • The -n option also now disables IP address geolocation information lookup in configured MaxMind databases (and geolocation lookup can be enabled with -Ng.) This is most relevant for TShark, where geolocation lookups are synchronous.

  • The display filter drop-down list is now sorted by "most recently used" instead of "most recently created".

  • Display filter syntax-related changes:

    • It is now possible to filter on raw packet data for any field by using the syntax @some.field == <bytes…​>. This can be useful to filter on malformed UTF-8 strings, among other use cases where it is necessary to look at the field’s raw data.

    • Negation (unary minus) now works with any display filter arithmetic expression.

    • Using the slice operator with strings produces a string. Previously it would produce a byte array. This is useful to index/slice UTF-8 multibyte strings. String byte slices can still be obtained using the "@" (raw operator) prefix.

    • Arithmetic expressions are allowed as set elements.

    • Absolute date and time values can be written as Unix time.

    • The limitation where a minus sign needed to be preceded by a space character has been removed.

    • Added XOR logical operator.

    • Fixed the implementation of all …​ in membership operator (#19188).

    • When parsing absolute time values the display filter engine has learned to understand timezones as specified in strptime(3), including some common North American designations. Arbitrary timezone names are not supported however. Previously only ISO8601 offsets and the "UTC" designation was understood.

    • Writing value strings without double quotes is deprecated and will generate a warning. Value strings are integer or boolean values that can be represented using a user-friendly textual format, such as "Set"/"Unset" instead of numerical values like 1 and 0. It is now a requirement that value strings need to be written enclosed in double-quotes.

    • The deprecated ~≃ operator symbol has been removed. It was replaced by !== in version 4.0.

  • Running the test suite requires the pytest Python module. The emulation layer that allowed running tests without pytest installed has been removed.

  • When saving files or exporting packets after changing their time with the "Time Shift" dialog, the shifted time is written to the new file.

  • TLS secrets used in decrypting packets can be embedded (or discarded) from the capture file via the GUI, similar to the options --inject-secrets and --discard-all-secrets in editcap.

  • The text of any configured column (displayed or hidden) can be filtered anywhere that filters are used - in display filters, filters in taps, coloring rules, Wireshark read filters, and the -Y, -R, and -e options to TShark, the "Apply as Filter" GUI option, etc.

    • The filter field names are prefixed by "_ws.col", followed by a lowercase version of the COL_ name found in epan/column-utils.h, e.g. "_ws.col.info" or "_ws.col.protocol"

    • Using the column names as a filter is slower than other filter types because the columns must be constructed, so when the same filtering can be achieved via other fields, prefer that.

  • The external name resolution text files "manuf", "enterprises" and "services" have been removed and replaced with static binary data. You can dump the respective internal data using tshark -G manuf|enterprises|services.

  • The "manuf" file is now also read from the personal configuration folder, and is profile-based.

  • The Lua console dialogs under the Tools menu were refactored and redesigned. It now consists of a single dialog window for input and output.

  • Wireshark now shows byte units in the statistics in the user-selected language (uses the system default language by default).

  • Packet list sorting has been improved:

    • When sorting packet list with a filter applied, only the visible packets are sorted, which greatly increases sorting speed.

    • The cache size for column text is limited to a default of 10000 rows, which limits the maximum memory usage. The maximum value can be changed in Preferences→Appearance→Layout

    • Due to the above, columns that require packet dissection can only be sorted if the number of visible rows is less than the cache size. If there are more rows visible, a warning will appear. Columns that do not require packet dissection (those that calculated directly from the capture file frame headers, such as packet number, time, and frame length) can be sorted with any number of visible rows.

    • Sorting can be interrupted.

  • When changing the dissector via the "Decode As" table for values that have default dissectors registered, selecting "(none)" will select no dissection (while still allowing heuristic dissectors to attempt to dissect.) The previous behavior was to reset the dissector to the default. To facilitate resetting the dissector, the default dissector is now sorted at the top of the list of possible dissector options.

  • The personal extcap plugin folder location on Unix has been changed to follow existing conventions for architecture-dependent files. The extcap personal folder is now $HOME/.local/lib/wireshark/extcap. Previously it was $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wireshark/extcap.

  • The "init.lua" file is now loaded from any of the Lua plugin directories. Previously it was loaded from the personal configuration directory. (For backward-compatibility this is still allowed; note that deprecated features may be removed in a future release).

  • Installation of development headers must be done explicitly using the CMake command cmake --install <builddir> --component Development.

  • The Windows build has a new SpeexDSP external dependency (https://www.speex.org). The speex code that was previously bundled has been removed.

  • New --print-timers option added to TShark.

Removed Features and Support

  • With the addition of the universal and consistent filtering support for column text, the previous support in the -e option to TShark for displaying column text via the column title has been removed in general. Those field names cannot be used elsewhere (as they may not be legal filter names) and create confusion if more than one column has the same title or if a column is renamed. Prefer the column format instead, e.g. "_ws.col.info" for "_ws.col.Info". However, for backwards compatibility with existing tools and scripts, the titles of the default columns can continue to be used with tshark -e (but not elsewhere.)

  • The bundled script "dtd_gen.lua" that was disabled by default has been removed from the installation. It can be found in the Wireshark Wiki under "Contrib".

  • The Wi-Fi NAN dissector filter name has been changed from 'nan' to 'wifi_nan'.

New File Format Decoding Support

RTPDump

New Protocol Support

Aruba UBT, ASAM Capture Module Protocol (CMP), ATSC Link-Layer Protocol (ALP), DECT DLC protocol layer (DECT-DLC), DECT NWK protocol layer (DECT-NWK), DECT proprietary Mitel OMM/RFP Protocol (also named AaMiDe), Digital Object Identifier Resolution Protocol (DO-IRP), Discard Protocol, FiRa UWB Controller Interface (UCI), FiveCo’s Register Access Protocol (5CoRAP), Fortinet FortiGate Cluster Protocol (FGCP), GPS L1 C/A LNAV navigation messages, GSM Radio Link Protocol (RLP), H.224, High Speed Fahrzeugzugang (HSFZ), Hypertext Transfer Protocol version 3 (HTTP/3), ID3v2, IEEE 802.1CB (R-TAG), Iperf3, JSON 3GPP, Low Level Signalling (ATSC3 LLS), Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP), Management Component Transport Protocol - Control Protocol (MCTP CP), Matter home automation protocol, Microsoft Delivery Optimization, Multi-Drop Bus (MDB), Non-volatile Memory Express - Management Interface (NVMe-MI) over MCTP, RDP audio output virtual channel Protocol (rdpsnd), RDP clipboard redirection channel Protocol (cliprdr), RDP Program virtual channel Protocol (RAIL), SAP Enqueue Server (SAPEnqueue), SAP GUI (SAPDiag), SAP HANA SQL Command Network Protocol (SAPHDB), SAP Internet Graphic Server (SAP IGS), SAP Message Server (SAPMS), SAP Network Interface (SAPNI), SAP Router (SAPROUTER), SAP Secure Network Connection (SNC), SBAS L1 Navigation Messages (SBAS L1), SINEC AP1 Protocol (SINEC AP), SMPTE ST2110-20 (Uncompressed Active Video), Train Real-Time Data Protocol (TRDP), UBX protocol of u-blox GNSS receivers (UBX), UDP Tracker Protocol for BitTorrent (BT-Tracker), UWB UCI Protocol, Video Protocol 9 (VP9), VMware HeartBeat, Windows Delivery Optimization (MS-DO), Z21 LAN Protocol (Z21), Zabbix, ZigBee Direct (ZBD), and Zigbee TLV

Updated Protocol Support

  • JSON: The dissector now has a preference to enable/disable "unescaping" of string values. By default it is off. Previously it was always on.

  • JSON: The dissector now supports "Display JSON in raw form".

  • IPv6: The dissector has a new preference to show some semantic details about addresses (default off).

  • IPv6: The dissector now supports dissecting the Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6) option in the Hop-by-Hop Options Header (HBH) and Destination Options Header (DOH), including all three types of APN ID, which are 32-bit, 64-bit and 128-bit in length.

  • XML: The dissector now supports display character according to the "encoding" attribute of the XML declaration, and has a new preference to set default character encoding for some XML document without "encoding" attribute.

  • SIP: The dissector now has a new preference to set default charset for displaying the body of SIP messages in raw text view.

  • HTTP: The dissector now supports dissecting chunked data in streaming reassembly mode. Subdissectors of HTTP can register itself in "streaming_content_type" subdissector table for enabling streaming reassembly mode while transferring in chunked encoding. This feature ensures the server stream messages of GRPC-Web over HTTP/1.1 can be dissected even if the last chunk is absent.

  • The media type dissector table now properly treats media types and subtypes as case-insensitive automatically, per RFC 6838. Media types no longer need to be lower cased before registering or looking up in the table.

  • CFM: The dissector has been overhauled and updated to the level of IEEE std 802.1Q-2022 and ITU-T Rec. G.8013/Y.1371 (08/2015). This includes dissection of additional PDU types and TLVs as well as deeper dissection of existing PDUs and TLVs.

Too many other protocol updates have been made to list them all here.

New and Updated Codec support

Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR), if compiled with opencore-amr.

Major API Changes

  • Lua function "package.prepend_path" has been removed. If you need it please consider adding your own package.path customization code or installing your dependencies in Wireshark’s default paths.

  • The reassemble_streaming_data_and_call_subdissector() API has been added to provide a simpler way to reassemble the streaming data of a high level protocol that is not on top of TCP.

  • Some of the API now uses C99 types instead of GLib types. Issue 19116

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