accessing raw sockets in windows is slightly different than on its linux brethrenbut we want to have the flexibility to deploy the same sniffer to multiple platforms we will create our socket object and then determine which platform we are running on windows requires us to set some additional flags through socket input/output control (ioctl),[ which enables promiscuous mode on the network interface in our first examplewe simply set up our raw socket snifferread in single packetand then quit import socket import os host to listen on host create raw socket and bind it to the public interface if os name ="nt"socket_protocol socket ipproto_ip elsesocket_protocol socket ipproto_icmp sniffer socket socket(socket af_inetsocket sock_rawsocket_protocolsniffer bind((host )we want the ip headers included in the capture sniffer setsockopt(socket ipproto_ipsocket ip_hdrincl if we're using windowswe need to send an ioctl to set up promiscuous mode if os name ="nt"sniffer ioctl(socket sio_rcvallsocket rcvall_onread in single packet print sniffer recvfrom( if we're using windowsturn off promiscuous mode if os name ="nt"sniffer ioctl(socket sio_rcvallsocket rcvall_offwe start by constructing our socket object with the parameters necessary for sniffing packets on our network interface the difference between windows and linux is that windows will allow us to sniff all incoming packets regardless of protocolwhereas linux forces us to specify that we are sniffing icmp note that we are using promiscuous modewhich requires administrative privileges on windows or root on linux promiscuous mode allows us to sniff all packets that the network card seeseven those not destined for your specific host next we set socket option that includes the ip headers in our captured packets the next step is to determine if we are using windowsand if sowe perform the additional step of sending an ioctl to the network card driver to enable promiscuous mode if you're running windows in virtual machineyou will likely get notification that the guest operating system is enabling promiscuous modeyouof coursewill allow it now we are ready to actually perform some sniffingand in this case we are simply printing out the entire raw packet with no packet decoding this is just to test to make sure we have the core of our sniffing code working after single packet is sniffedwe again test for windowsand disable promiscuous mode before exiting the script