Skip to main content

This file is an extract from the the online documentation at https://www.coresecurity.com/corelabs-research/open-source-tools/pcapy

What is Pcapy?

Pcapy is a Python extension module that enables software written in Python to access the routines from the pcap packet capture library.

From libpcap’s documentation: “Libpcap is a system-independent interface for user-level packet capture. Libpcap provides a portable framework for low-level network monitoring. Applications include network statistics collection, security monitoring, network debugging, etc.”

What makes pcapy different from the others?

  • works with Python threads.

  • works both in UNIX with libpcap and Windows with WinPcap.

  • provides a simpler Object Oriented API.

Getting Pcapy

Current and past releases are available from https://www.coresecurity.com/corelabs-research/open-source-tools/pcapy

Setup

Quick start

Grab the latest stable release, unpack it and run ‘python setup.py install’ from the directory where you placed it. Isn’t that easy?

Requirements

  • A Python interpreter. Versions 2.1.3 and newer are known to work.

  • A C++ compiler. GCC G++ 2.95, as well as Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, are known to work.

  • Libpcap 0.7.2 or newer. Windows user are best to check WinPcap 3.0 or newer.

  • A recent release of Pcapy.

Compiling the source and installing

As this extension is written in C++ it needs to be compiled for the host system before it can be accessed from Python. Fortunately this process has been made easy by the setup.py script. In order to compile and install the source execute the following command from the directory where the pcapy’s distribution has been unpacked: ‘python setup.py install’. This will install the extension into the default Python’s modules path; note that you might need special permissions to write there. For more information on what commands and options are available from setup.py, run ‘python setup.py –help-commands’.

This extension has been tested under Linux and Windows systems and is known to work there, but it ought to work out-of-the-box on any system where Python and libpcap are available.

Licensing

This software is provided under under a slightly modified version of the Apache Software License. See the accompanying LICENSE file for more information.

Contact Us

Whether you want to report a bug, send a patch or give some suggestions on this package, drop us a few lines at oss@coresecurity.com.

Release files for pcapy 0.11.4

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for pcapy 0.11.4
File Size Uploaded
pcapy-0.11.4.tar.gz 37.0 kB Details

Release files / pcapy-0.11.4.tar.gz

Download URL pcapy-0.11.4.tar.gz
Size 37.0 kB
Tags Source
SHA-256 checksum
How to use checksums
aa239913678d7ba116e66057a37f914de7726aecd11d00db470127df115c4e78
BLAKE2b-256 checksum
How to use checksums
b068b49e008f9e2b5ab727fb4b820c2e7d0914bd8dacb3c2d668a36b6e5d8991
Upload date
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing?
What is trusted publishing?
No

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

This release

0.11.4 This release

1 release file

0.11.3

1 release file

0.11.2

1 release file

0.11.1

1 release file

0.10.10

1 release file

0.10.9

1 release file

0.10.8

1 release file

0.10.3

0.10.2

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page