Shadow IT can impose security risks when employees use unapproved software that do not meet your company’s security standards. With our discovery tool, you can find and locate running Dropbox desktop instances on your local network.
How it works
You will need to download the tool at the bottom of this page, then run it on your computer. When the discovery process starts, the application will open a UDP port (17500) to watch incoming Dropbox LAN Sync packets from within the local network your computer is currently connected to.
📝 Note: In case your local network contains multiple IP subnets, you will need to re-run the tool and repeat the discovery for each network.
Who can use this tool?
The discovery tool doesn’t require additional permissions, you only need to be connected to a company network to start the discovery process. However, you will need to connect to all company networks to get a complete result.
In certain cases (on Linux and older versions of Windows or Mac OS), the same port is used by both Dropbox and the discovery tool, which means that we cannot run the discovery process if you have Dropbox installed and running on your computer.
If you encounter this issue, you will need to uninstall Dropbox and re-run the application.
Supported operating systems
- Windows: Windows 10, Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows 7
- Linux: Linux x86, Linux x64
- Mac: Mac OS X 10.13 High Sierra, Mac OS X 10.12 Sierra, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks
Download and run the application
- Windows
- Linux
- Mac
- Download and run the application.
- Hit Y to start the discovery process.
- Wait for the discovery to complete.
- The tool will list all found Dropbox instances with their respective IP addresses.
- Set the file permission using chmod, then run the application.
- Hit Y to start the discovery process.
- Wait for the discovery to complete.
- The tool will list all found Dropbox instances with their respective IP addresses.
- Set the file permission using chmod+x, then run the application from Terminal.
- Hit Y to start the discovery process.
- Wait for the discovery to complete.
- The tool will list all found Dropbox instances with their respective IP addresses.
The discovery tool is open-source — if you are interested in how it works, the documentation is available on Github for you to read.