How to determine what URL a closed source piece of software is connecting to? (OSX)

Question

Usually I'd use Wireshark, but is there a really super quick way to determine what URL an app is pulling data from? I need to whitelist the host so that it works through a proxy server, as the app doesn't support proxies.

Answer 1

Give this a shot:

Charles Web Debugging Proxy

It's not quite as heavy as Wireshark so you should be able to get your results pretty quick. Short of something like Wireshark or a HTTP Debugging Proxy, I'm not sure how you'd know.

Answer 2

Fire up terminal and type

lsof -i

this lists all open internet connections. Of course you can restrict the listing to include only connections from certain executable with -c option. Read the man page for lsof. Learn to use it, it's a great little tool.

Answer 3

Check out Little Snitch http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

Great little program to catch those "phone homes". Cheap too!