mcp-wireshark

Community-maintained MCP server for Wireshark / tshark. Not affiliated with Wireshark or Anthropic.

Give your AI assistant direct access to packet captures. Ask Claude to summarize a .pcap, follow a TCP stream, filter for a specific protocol, or capture live traffic — all without leaving the chat.

Quick start with Claude Code

pip install mcp-wireshark
claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user mcp-wireshark -- mcp-wireshark

That's it. Open Claude Code and try:

"Summarize ./capture.pcap and tell me which IPs talked the most."

--scope user makes the server available across every Claude Code project. Drop the flag to install it for the current project only. See claude mcp docs for more.

Verify the install

claude mcp list

You should see mcp-wireshark listed. Inside Claude Code, ask:

"Run check_installation."

If tshark is on your PATH, it returns the version. If not, see troubleshooting.

Tools

The server exposes 10 tools, split cleanly between read tools (safe, no side effects) and write tools (capture traffic or write files). Both groups are annotated with the standard MCP readOnlyHint so any compliant client can surface the distinction.

Read tools

Safe to call freely — they only inspect state.

Tool	What it does
`check_installation`	Verify tshark is installed and show version
`list_interfaces`	List network interfaces available to capture from
`read_pcap`	Read packets from a `.pcap` / `.pcapng` file (preview + total count)
`display_filter`	Apply a Wireshark display filter to a pcap
`summarize_pcap`	High-level summary: I/O stats, protocol hierarchy, top talkers
`stats_by_proto`	Protocol hierarchy statistics
`follow_tcp`	Reassemble a TCP stream and return its payload
`follow_udp`	Reassemble a UDP stream and return its payload

Write tools

These create files or capture live traffic. Compliant clients may prompt before invoking.

Tool	What it does
`live_capture`	Capture live traffic from an interface (capped at 5 minutes / 10k packets)
`export_json`	Export packets from a pcap to a JSON file at a path you choose

Example prompts

Drop these into Claude Code as-is:

List my network interfaces.
Summarize ./traffic.pcap.
From ./traffic.pcap, show me only HTTP requests.
Follow TCP stream 0 in ./traffic.pcap and tell me what protocol is in it.
Capture 30 seconds of traffic on Wi-Fi filtered to tcp.port == 443.
Export every DNS packet from ./traffic.pcap to ./dns.json.

Useful display filters

Filter	Matches
`tcp.port == 80`	HTTP
`tcp.port == 443`	HTTPS
`dns`	All DNS
`http.request`	HTTP requests only
`ip.addr == 10.0.0.1`	Traffic to/from a specific host
`tcp.flags.syn == 1 && tcp.flags.ack == 0`	TCP SYN packets only

For substation engineers analyzing IEC 61850 traffic:

Filter	Matches
`goose`	All GOOSE messages
`goose.stNum > 0`	GOOSE messages with state changes
`mms`	All MMS traffic
`sv`	Sampled Values

Other clients

Anything that speaks MCP works. The package installs an mcp-wireshark binary on PATH.

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wireshark": {
      "command": "mcp-wireshark"
    }
  }
}

VS Code (Copilot / GitHub Copilot Chat)

Create .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace:

{
  "servers": {
    "wireshark": {
      "command": "mcp-wireshark"
    }
  }
}

Cursor / Windsurf / others

Use the same stdio invocation: command: mcp-wireshark. No transport flags.

Prerequisites

Python 3.10+
Wireshark installed; tshark reachable on PATH

Install with pip or uv:

pip install mcp-wireshark
# or
uvx mcp-wireshark

Troubleshooting

tshark not found on Windows

Add Wireshark to your system PATH:

Press Win+R → run sysdm.cpl → Advanced → Environment Variables
Edit Path → add C:\Program Files\Wireshark
Restart your terminal and Claude Code, then re-run check_installation

(Avoid passing PATH through claude mcp add --env — values are taken literally, no %PATH% expansion.)

Permission denied capturing on Linux

Add yourself to the wireshark group, then log out and back in:

sudo usermod -aG wireshark $USER

"No packets captured" from live_capture

Confirm the interface name from list_interfaces (Wireshark uses different names than ifconfig/ip)
On macOS, you may need to install ChmodBPF (ships with the Wireshark .dmg)
Check that no display filter is excluding everything

Development

git clone https://github.com/khuynh22/mcp-wireshark.git
cd mcp-wireshark
python -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate  # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

pytest                   # tests
black src tests          # format
ruff check src tests     # lint
mypy src                 # type check

The codebase is organized so new tools land in one of two clearly-scoped files:

src/mcp_wireshark/read_tools.py — anything that just inspects state
src/mcp_wireshark/write_tools.py — anything that captures traffic or writes files

server.py only contains routing. See CLAUDE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security

Every file path is validated (.. rejected, extension allow-listed). Every display filter is checked for shell metacharacters. tshark is always invoked via asyncio.create_subprocess_exec, never shell=True. Hard caps: 10k packets per call, 5 min per live capture. See SECURITY.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.