Hardware Sniffer?

[RobinVossen]

Well, I am a real inside Geek. I want to know how stuff works.
I do network sniffing a lot just for the Heck of it. I play around with Assembler and hping just to try stuff.
But now Id like to Sniff hardware.. Let me explain my goal.
I can hook-up anykind of device on this pc. Using COM, USB, Bluetooth, Wifi, Eth and Infared.
I know how to read the data that comes in with the Eth or Wifi. since thats Wireshark that can read that. And infared can be read with LiRC... But now Id like to know if anyone knows how to read that Data that goes over USB?
Or to the PCI card. Like a sniffer on /dev/<Anything>
I know something like this should be able to be done. Since a friend of mine did sniff his extra-LCD screen using Windows. And well he did play around with it. Now the LCD screen plays his own Texts...
I hope anyone can tell me how to Sniff hardware..
Well I hope this can be done. and I also hope this is the good Place for it.
I really like to know better how this works... Or how I can play around with this.
I really love to know how to make Drivers or something.

well I hope that all works..

Cheers,
Robin

[RobinVossen]

I have been thinking about this idea.
What I got now is the following:
I make a Device Standing just outside Linux so Basicly Ill be able to use it on ANY system...
I need a Input a Output and a Reader.
So:
- Input -> Female-USB-Port
- Output -> Male-USB-Port
- Reader -> LCD-Screen/NVRAM(Store in TextFile)/Serial port(Read within the linux box using Kermit of some kind)

But in this way Id need to make a Cercuit board.

USB uses 4 wires:
Pin Description
1 +5V
2 Data −
3 Data +
4 Ground

So if I think of this Correctly (here my Knowledge fails I guess)
I need to connect the Serial port(assuming thats the easyest and Cheapest) Transmitted Data and Received Data pin to the 2th and 3th pin of the USB and then Split it to also make it to from the male to the female right?

I hope I make anysence here...

Plz help ^^

[RobinVossen]

I heard from a friend of mine that there are things/tools in Linux to monitor stuff. Though he did not know how what its name was..
How to monitor Hardware Ports?

So, here is a bump since its a old post now..
I really want this..

[dilbert]

On Linux USB is a menu point "Tools" but that's only for software.

I think it's quite difficult to monitor the USB hardware. At least, there are no cheap USB hardware analysers. To only monitor the lines you can use a scope.

I think there was also a program usbmonitor or the like but all of them were difficult to compile and cumbersome to use. At least, a few years ago. I ended up in putting debug code into a USB driver and now we got an expensive LeCroy Protocol analyser.

[RobinVossen]

Thanks Ill look into that when I get home.
I guess it will be Quite hard aswell but not much harder as Wireshark raw protocol reading.. ^^

Cheers,
Robin