Observing AnyDesk Connection Attempts with Wireshark and tcpdump

posted: August 14, 2026

I wanted to see what network traffic is generated when an AnyDesk connection is initiated, specifically whether a destination IP can be observed before the remote session is accepted.

The tests were performed against machines I control in a lab environment using Wireshark and tcpdump.

0x01 - Initial capture

I first monitored the wireless interface with Wireshark.

The capture showed AnyDesk traffic mixed with traffic from other applications, so I switched to tcpdump to make the connection attempts easier to isolate.

I also checked the active sockets with:

ss -tnp

This showed AnyDesk maintaining several connections, including connections on port 6568 and a local connection to port 7070.

0x02 - Watching for new connections

Instead of looking at every packet, I focused on outbound TCP SYN packets:

sudo tcpdump -i wlan0 -nn \\
'src host 192.168.1.6 and tcp[tcpflags] & tcp-syn != 0'

A TCP SYN marks an attempt to establish a new TCP connection.

With the capture running, I entered a lab machine’s AnyDesk ID and pressed Connect.

0x03 - The observed IP

During the test, tcpdump produced:

20:45:29.907057 IP 192.168.1.6.47236 > 103.216.221.93.7070: Flags [S], seq 137922076, win 64240, options [mss 1460,sackOK,TS val 3470803047 ecr 0,nop,wscale 10], length 0

20:45:29.907240 IP 192.168.1.6.35376 > 103.216.221.93.43659: Flags [S], seq 226864075, win 64240, options [mss 1460,sackOK,TS val 970869676 ecr 0,nop,wscale 10], length 0

The destination IP observed during this test was:

103.216.221.93

The two connection attempts were:

192.168.1.6:47236 → 103.216.221.93:7070
192.168.1.6:35376 → 103.216.221.93:43659

Both packets were TCP SYN packets generated around the connection attempt.

tcpdump output showing the observed destination IP.

0x04 - Verifying it in Wireshark

I then checked the same traffic in Wireshark.

Using a display filter such as:

ip.addr == 192.168.1.6 && tcp.port == 7070

made the relevant traffic easier to inspect.

The packet details showed:

Internet Protocol Version 4
    Source Address:      192.168.1.6
    Destination Address: 103.216.221.93

Transmission Control Protocol
    Source Port:         47236
    Destination Port:    7070
    Flags:               SYN

Wireshark capture showing the TCP connection attempt.

The same destination address was visible in both the tcpdump output and Wireshark.

0x05 - Direct confirmation

To isolate the observed address, I ran:

sudo tcpdump -i wlan0 -nn 'host 103.216.221.93'

The resulting packets were:

20:45:29.907057 IP 192.168.1.6.47236 > 103.216.221.93.7070: Flags [S], length 0
20:45:29.907240 IP 192.168.1.6.35376 > 103.216.221.93.43659: Flags [S], length 0

This confirmed that 103.216.221.93 was an actual destination of the captured outbound TCP connection attempts.

0x06 - Repeating the test

I repeated the same procedure with multiple lab AnyDesk IDs:

  1. Start the packet capture on wlan0.
  2. Enter the lab machine’s AnyDesk ID.
  3. Press Connect.
  4. Watch for new outbound TCP SYN packets.
  5. Check the destination address in Wireshark or tcpdump.

The behavior was reproducible in the controlled tests: initiating the connection generated observable outbound traffic, and the destination IP appeared in the packet headers.

The latest test produced:

103.216.221.93

with connection attempts to:

7070
43659

0x07 - Result

The experiment demonstrated that, in these lab tests, an AnyDesk connection attempt generated network traffic containing a destination IP before the remote session was accepted.

The key packet was:

192.168.1.6.47236 > 103.216.221.93.7070: Flags [S]

The relevant information was:

Source IP        : 192.168.1.6
Destination IP   : 103.216.221.93
Source Port      : 47236
Destination Port : 7070
TCP Flag         : SYN

This observation was reproduced across multiple controlled lab tests using Wireshark and tcpdump.

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