Capturing mobile phone traffic on Wireshark

Question

How can I capture mobile phone traffic on Wireshark?

Answer 1

Similarly to making your PC a wireless access point, but can be much easier, is using reverse tethering. If you happen to have an HTC phone they have a nice reverse-tethering option called "Internet pass-through", under the network/mobile network sharing settings. It routes all your traffic through your PC and you can just run Wireshark there.

Answer 2

For Android phone I used tPacketCapture: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.taosoftware.android.packetcapture&hl=en

This app was a lifesaver I was debugging a problem with failure of SSL/TLS handshake on my Android app. Tried to setup ad hoc networking so I could use wireshark on my laptop. It did not work for me. This app quickly allowed me to capture network traffic, share it on my Google Drive so I could download on my laptop where I could examine it with Wireshark! Awesome and no root required!

Answer 3

For Android, I previously used tPacketCapture but it didn't work well for an app streaming some video. I'm now using Shark. You need to be root to use it though.

It uses TCPDump (check the arguments you can pass) and creates a pcap file that can be read by Wireshark. The default arguments are usually good enough for me.

Answer 4

Make your laptop a wifi hotspot for your phone (any) and connect it to internet. Sniff Traffic on your wifi interface using wireshark.

you will get to know a lot of anti privacy stuff!