BFbfoks·Apr 7, 2024Submission
Ngrep – GNU grep applied to the network layer
2 points · Open discussionjpr5
ngrep
C2018–2024
jpr5 / ngrep
ngrep
ngrep is like GNU grep applied to the network layer. It's a PCAP-based tool that allows you to specify an extended regular or hexadecimal expression to match against data payloads of packets. It understands many kinds of protocols, including IPv4/6, TCP, UDP, ICMPv4/6, IGMP and Raw, across a wide variety of interface types, and understands BPF filter logic in the same fashion as more common packet sniffing tools, such as tcpdump and snoop.
3Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
ngrep is like GNU grep applied to the network layer. It's a PCAP-based tool that allows you to specify an extended regular or hexadecimal expression to match against data payloads of packets. It understands many kinds of protocols, including IPv4/6, TCP, UDP, ICMPv4/6, IGMP and Raw, across a wide variety of interface types, and understands BPF filter logic in the same fashion as more common packet sniffing tools, such as tcpdump and snoop.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year3 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2018-05-30 03:10:21 UTC to 2024-04-07 12:17:29 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
3 sourcesWireshark is very good and this definitely looks like a nice tool, that could be a good alternative to ngrep that I usually rely on on the command line.
https://github.com/jpr5/ngrep
In Termshark – A terminal UI for tshark, inspired by WiresharkGood stuff, thanks for sharing. I always forget you can do indexing into the packet itself as in tcp[((tcp[12:1] & 0xf0) >> 2):4].
Also sometimes I reach for ngrep if it is installed:
https://github.com/jpr5/ngrep/blob/master/EXAMPLES.md
In Tcpdump Examples