Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] GSoC 2013 Project Proposal for Root permissions in wireshark

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 21:36:44 -0700
On May 1, 2013, at 8:58 PM, Mohana Sai <mohanasai.26@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Sorry for not being specific in the previous mail.
> 
> I was thinking about adding ACL to dumpcap file.

I.e., set an ACL limiting who is allowed to execute it?

Do *ALL* file systems on which dumpcap might reside support ACLs?

> And if many systems don't have D-Bus by default, we can use some IPC which is very common in linux systems

Most systems running Wireshark aren't Linux systems.

> (unix pipes came to mind, but not sure if it is supported in all linux systems

Any Linux system that doesn't support them should be set on fire, and the person who removed the support horsewhipped.  Srsly.

It should be supported by *all* UN*X systems, including Linux, *BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, OS X, etc..

As for Windows (I would not be surprised to hear that most systems running Wireshark are Windows systems at this point), I'm not sure I'd call them "Unix pipes", as Windows isn't Unix, but it does support pipes. and they do behave very similarly to pipes on Unix.

> and I read about distributed objects which can be used in OS x).

So can, err, umm, Unix pipes.

BTW, TShark and Wireshark currently communicate with dumpcap using an, err, umm, pipe....