The men behind ettercap-NG

An anonymous reader writes "In 2001 two Italians released the first beta version of ettercap, a network protocol analyzer. Ettercap is now covered in most security books. It's number 9 in the Top 75 Security Tools list of the Nmap Hackers mailing list. This summer they released ettercap-NG, which was completely rewritten from scratch with better, modular code, making it easier to add new features and write and submit patches. NewsForge recently caught up with its authors for an Interview."

Comments

Good summary, this time

[YetAnotherName]

All too often, software announcements mention just the name of the item and not what it is or why it's interesting. As an example, compare this recent summary for Zope.

Not everyone's heard of Ettercap; this summary says what it is (network protocol analyzer) and also why it's important (in top ten of security tools). I hope to see more summaries of this caliber on Slashdot.

Re:Good summary, this time

[RollingThunder]

There has to be a limit, otherwise we end up having to define "man in the middle" and "LAN" and "content filtering", etc.

I think that stating "network protocol analyzer" is sufficient - it indicates the general concept area, and gives the reader enough information to decide if it's something he should be going to dig deeper on or not.

I do agree with a different responder that some things that could have been hyperlinked weren't.

The fact that it's a *NIX program

[Lifewish]

"anyone care to justify this application, which seems to be yet another blackhat/script kiddy tool?"

Anyone who's smart enough to use it effectively deserves results :)

Seriously, a swiss army knife for kiddies is by definition a swiss army knife for security testers and system managers. I'd prefer for hacking tools to be available for all rather than just for the malicious portion of the online population.

Re:Legal uses of ettercap

[warpSpeed]

Hmmm, so I can alter my XBox without any legal problems? I paid for it.

Sure, you just void your warrenty.

What about these DVDs and CDs I bought, I can rip them onto my laptop so I don't have to carry my CDs and DVDs around? I bought these too.

You can back them up, or convert them to some other format for your convinience.

So I can burn down my own house? I own it... ah... oh... well half of it, the bank owns the other bit (d'oh). If I select the half I own, say the bathroom and the box room; I can trash that with impunity.

You can do what you want with your house with in the limit of the law.

Ownership doesn't necessarily convey infinite rights, just demans good stewardship. Don't forget to tell Bush...

Ownership allows you to do what you want with your property as long as it is within the law. Nothing demands good stewardship, unless you count community peer pressure.

And I did tell Bush, I voted for him. :-)

Re:Well, I have never liked ettercap

[the_mad_poster]

Soooo... your theory behind network intrusion testing is that you shouldn't try to break into the network while you're doing it, and therefore any tool that would help you do it must be useless or evil?

Remind me to never hire you for anything related to network security testing....