This is a cross-platform command-line tool for obtaining live, rudimentary network connection data on a computer system. This tool was designed for network and security analysts to easily view connections on a system as they occur. It will display useful information about network connections that utilities like netstat typically won't give you such as what time the connection was made, the exact command that created the connection, and the user that connection was made by.
Note for Windows users: Detailed process information will not display unless you're running as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. An easy way to drop into a system-level command prompt is to use PsExec from SysInternals. Run psexec -i -s cmd.exe as Administrator and then run histstat.
*nix/macOS:
sudo pip install histstat
Windows (open cmd.exe as Administrator):
python -m pip install histstat
$ histstat --help
usage: histstat [-h] [-i INTERVAL] [-j] [-l LOG] [-p] [-q] [-v] [--hash]
history for netstat
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-i INTERVAL, --interval INTERVAL
specify update interval in seconds
-j, --json json output
-l LOG, --log LOG log output to a file
-p, --prettify prettify output
-q, --quiet quiet mode, do not output to stdout (for use when logging)
-v, --version display the current version
--hash takes md5 and sha256 hashes of process files (warning: slow!)
$ sudo histstat -p -l log.txt
date time proto laddr lport raddr rport status user pid pname command
19-06-18 21:18:44 tcp 0.0.0.0 22 * * LISTEN root 650 sshd /usr/bin/sshd -D
19-06-18 21:18:44 udp 0.0.0.0 68 * * - root 647 dhcpcd /usr/bin/dhcpcd -q -b
19-06-18 21:18:51 tcp 0.0.0.0 8000 * * LISTEN vesche 5435 python python -m http.server
19-06-18 21:19:11 tcp 0.0.0.0 1337 * * LISTEN vesche 5602 ncat ncat -l -p 1337
19-06-18 21:19:26 tcp 127.0.0.1 39246 * * LISTEN vesche 5772 electron /usr/lib/electron/electron --nolazy --inspect=39246 /usr/lib/code/out/bootstrap-fork --type=extensionHost
19-06-18 21:19:28 tcp 10.13.37.114 43924 13.107.6.175 443 ESTABLISHED vesche 5689 code-oss /usr/lib/electron/electron /usr/lib/code/code.js
...
Huge thanks to Giampaolo Rodola' (giampaolo) and all the contributers of psutil for the amazing open source library that this project relies upon completely.
Also, thanks to gleitz and his project howdoi, in my refactor of histstat I modeled my code around his command line tool as the code is exceptionally clean and readable.
A big thanks to JavaScriptDude who has a fantastic fork of histstat with many additional features, some of which have now been implemented in this project such as: optional IP geolocation and quiet mode for logging.