Uploading Captures

Drag and Drop

Files can be dragged from any modern operating system’s file explorer window right onto the Upload Files box on the CloudShark capture file index page (for users that are logged in) or CloudShark login page (for guests, when guest access is enabled).

Users can choose multiple files and Drag and Drop them into CloudShark. They will be uploaded all at the same time. Drag & Drop of a Folder is not supported.

File Select

Instead of dragging files into the Upload Files box, files can also be uploaded by clicking on the Drag and Drop box. This will open the browser’s file selector box, allowing you to navigate through the file system and select one or more capture files to upload. Browsers that do not support Drag & Drop will only be able to use this method.

Import from URL

Users can also paste URL of a capture file into the Import from URL box. Files imported from a URL can be located anywhere the CloudShark instance has network access to, including the Internet and other local or remote networks.

Note that CloudShark supports importing via URL of files secured with basic and digest HTTP authentication and FTP authentication as well. The authentication credentials can be passed along in the URL using the following syntax:

http://username:password@server/path/file.pcap

or:

ftp://username:password@server/path/file.pcap

The credentials used to retrieve the URL will be stored within the CloudShark database, however they are hidden from users once the file has been imported. In addition, passwords with a literal ‘@’ in them are not supported due to the manner in which CloudShark handles URL style passwords.

URLs may contain special characters, provided they are properly encoded (ie spaces must be replaced with ‘%20’, ‘&’ characters with ‘%26’, etc.). More information on URL encoding rules can be found here 

API Tokens

Files can also be imported directly by scripts or other test tools using CloudShark’s API. Please see the API section for more information.

Files are always owned by the user that uploaded them. The CloudShark administrator can modify the owner of any file at any time. If guest access is enabled, files uploaded by any non-CloudShark users will be owned by the guest system account.

Enabling the Upload Link option on an API token allows anybody with the token and access to the CloudShark server to browse to /captures/upload?token=xxxx and upload files to the token owner’s account.

To enhance security, enabling the Upload Link option restricts all other permissions except for the “upload” permission. This ensures that users with the link can only upload files and cannot perform any other actions.

Since this link is intended to be shared, and contains the actual API token, great care should be taken in sharing only with trusted individuals. We strongly recommend deleting the token once it has been used and not editing its permissions afterwards. Editing existing token permissions will be removed from a future release of CloudShark.

Upload Errors

A status box will appear whenever capture files are uploaded. If any issues are encountered while uploading a file, an error message will be displayed, and CloudShark will continue to process and upload all subsequent files. File upload failures are often related to a few common issues such as files that containing no packets or files that are of the wrong type (ie not recognized capture file formats).

Guests are subject to certain upload restrictions. Guests are only allowed to upload one file at a time using the Drag and Drop and File Select features, whereas CloudShark users can upload multiple files simultaneously.