Adding custom layer to packet from capture fails

Question

I am trying to implement my own decoding layer ontop of TCP, so far it only works when I create a packet without any Eth/IP/TCP header and set its layer to my custom layer manually. The data of the custom protocol is inside an ordinary TCP payload.

How do I decode only the payload of the TCP layer as another layer?

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/google/gopacket"
    "github.com/google/gopacket/pcap"
)

var (
    pcapFile string = "capt.pcap"
    handle   *pcap.Handle
    err      error
)

type CustomLayer struct {
    SomeByte    byte
    AnotherByte byte
    restOfData  []byte
}

var CustomLayerType = gopacket.RegisterLayerType(
    2001,
    gopacket.LayerTypeMetadata{
        "CustomLayerType",
        gopacket.DecodeFunc(decodeCustomLayer),
    },
)

func (l CustomLayer) LayerType() gopacket.LayerType {
    return CustomLayerType
}

func (l CustomLayer) LayerContents() []byte {
    return []byte{l.SomeByte, l.AnotherByte}
}

func (l CustomLayer) LayerPayload() []byte {
    return l.restOfData
}

func decodeCustomLayer(data []byte, p gopacket.PacketBuilder) error {
    p.AddLayer(&CustomLayer{data[0], data[1], data[2:]})

    // nil means this is the last layer. No more decoding
    return nil
}

func main() {
    handle, err = pcap.OpenOffline(pcapFile)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    defer handle.Close()

    packetSource := gopacket.NewPacketSource(handle, handle.LinkType())
    for packet := range packetSource.Packets() {
        tcpLayer := packet.Layer(layers.LayerTypeTCP)
        if tcpLayer != nil {
            fmt.Println("TCP layer detected.")
            tcp, _ := tcpLayer.(*layers.TCP)
            fmt.Println("Sequence number: ", tcp.Seq)
            customLayer := packet.Layer(CustomLayerType)
            if customLayer != nil { // always nil
                customLayerContent, _ := customLayer.(*CustomLayer)
                // Now we can access the elements of the custom struct
                fmt.Println("Payload: ", customLayerContent.LayerPayload())
                fmt.Println("SomeByte element:", customLayerContent.SomeByte)
                fmt.Println("AnotherByte element:", customLayerContent.AnotherByte)
            }
        }
        fmt.Println()
    }
}

Most of the code is from this great post by devdungeon.

Answer 1

As no one responded I am going to answer it myself now.

Basically we have 3 options to handle this:

1. Create an extended TCP layer that handles our additional bytes and override default one by setting layers.LinkTypeMetadata[layers.LinkTypeTCP] to our extended version. Have a look at this example.

2. Create a new packet from the TCP payload using gopacket.NewPacket setting firstLayerDecoder to CustomLayerType and decode it normally.

3. As you mostly don't need an actual layer but instead a filled CustomLayer struct simply write a DecodeBytesToCustomStruct function where you pass TCP payload. This way we can even return multiple structs from one packets payload which wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Omit all CustomLayer code from above.

type CustomStruct struct {
    SomeByte    byte
    AnotherByte byte
    restOfData  []byte
}

func (customStruct *CustomStruct) DecodeStructFromBytes(data []byte) error { 
    customStruct.SomeByte = data[0]
    customStruct.AnotherByte = data[1]
    customStruct.restOfData = data[2:]
    return nil
}

In your main.go

for packet := range packetSource.Packets() {
    tcpLayer := packet.Layer(layers.LayerTypeTCP)
    if tcpLayer != nil {
        tcp, _ := tcpLayer.(*layers.TCP)
        if tcp.Payload != nil && len(tcpLayer.Payload) > 0 {
            customStruct := CustomStruct{}
            customStruct.DecodeStructFromBytes(tcp.Payload)
            fmt.Println("SomeByte element:", customStruct.SomeByte)
        }
    }
}

tcp.Payload is the same as packet.ApplicationLayer().Payload()