rvi_capture

rvictl for Linux, macOS, and Windows: capture packets sent/received by iOS devices

A utility to create packet capture dumps from iOS devices; useful for debugging network activity via Wireshark.

Tested on Arch Linux with iOS 14.8 and macOS 13.1 with iOS 17.4.

Prerequisites

Linux and macOS

libimobiledevice and python3 must be installed. Ensure that the usbmuxd daemon is running.

Windows

python3 and iTunes must be installed. Ensure that the AppleMobileDeviceService.exe process is running.
libimobiledevice will be downloaded as needed.

Usage

./rvi_capture.py [--format {pcap,pcapng}] [--udid UDID] outfile

• --format: capture format
  • pcapng: The default. Newer and allows for distinguishing between interfaces. Wireshark 3.0+ supports streaming captures with this format.
  • pcap: Older format for compatibility.
• --udid: device UDID
  The specific device to target. If omitted, the first device found will be used.
• outfile: output file or FIFO, or - for standard output.

Using with Wireshark

./rvi_capture.py - | wireshark -k -i -

Tips

• In Wireshark, you can filter for a particular network interface based on the frame.interface_name field. Here are some possible values (as tested on iOS 14.8):
  • en0: wifi interface
  • pdp_ip0: cellular interface
  • ipsec1: IPSec outer transport for VoLTE
  • ipsec3: IPSec inner transport for VoLTE