How To Install tcpdump on Kali Linux

In this tutorial we learn how to install tcpdump on Kali Linux. tcpdump is command-line network traffic analyzer

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install tcpdump on Kali Linux.

What is tcpdump

tcpdump is:

This program allows you to dump the traffic on a network. tcpdump is able to examine IPv4, ICMPv4, IPv6, ICMPv6, UDP, TCP, SNMP, AFS BGP, RIP, PIM, DVMRP, IGMP, SMB, OSPF, NFS and many other packet types.

It can be used to print out the headers of packets on a network interface, filter packets that match a certain expression. You can use this tool to track down network problems, to detect attacks or to monitor network activities.

There are three methods to install tcpdump on Kali Linux. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install tcpdump Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install tcpdump using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install tcpdump

Install tcpdump Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install tcpdump using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install tcpdump

Install tcpdump Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude on Kali Linux first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Kali Linux. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install tcpdump using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install tcpdump

How To Uninstall tcpdump on Kali Linux

To uninstall only the tcpdump package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove tcpdump

Uninstall tcpdump And Its Dependencies

To uninstall tcpdump and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Kali Linux, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove tcpdump

Remove tcpdump Configurations and Data

To remove tcpdump configuration and data from Kali Linux we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge tcpdump

Remove tcpdump configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove tcpdump configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge tcpdump

Dependencies

tcpdump have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install tcpdump package on Kali Linux using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.