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The men behind ettercap-NG

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the lock-down-the-hatches dept.

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."

7 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Well, I have never liked ettercap by NicolaiBSD · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You're comparing apples and oranges. Ettercap is not just a packet dumping/protocol analyzer tool like tcpdump. It has many active features, like arp-cache poisoning, data injection etc.

  2. I love ettercap... by wschalle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its man in the middle feature lets me catch botnets on my college campus (I work in the IT dept.) and shut them down immediately.

  3. Re:Interesting comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think someone has forgotten a :) at the end of the statement... indeed the next sentences explain the real meaning...

  4. Re:Legal uses of ettercap by warpSpeed · · Score: 2, Interesting
    anyone care to justify this application, which seems to be yet another blackhat/script kiddy tool?

    It is perfectly legal for me to do anything I like on my network. What more justification do I need?

    Perhaps we should ban debuggers too, because all we can use them for is breaking into commercial software...

  5. Re:Legal uses of ettercap by slash-tard · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I sniff traffic all the time using ethereal, etherpeek, and tcpdump. I do this to verify traffic from remote customers, help debug developers custom applications, and estimate bandwidth usage by application. I dont have a need for ettercap, man in the middle attacks, or arp poisoning though. Sniffers do have many legitimate uses other than spying on email and IM sessions.

  6. Re:Network Analizer... duh by slasher999 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I tend to agree. Ettercap is a tool I've played with and it has helped me to understand some new concepts, but I haven't really found a good use for it in my day to day Sr Sys Adm career. Other "grey" tools however, such as ethereal and nmap, I wouldn't be without. As the authors pointed out, it's not the tools that are evil.

  7. Attercop ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Old fat spider
    spinning in a tree!
    Old fat spider
    can't see me!
    Attercop! Attercop!
    Won't you stop,
    Stop your spinning
    and look at me!

    Old Tomnoddy, all big body,
    Old Tomnoddy can't spy me!
    Attercop! Attercop!
    Down you drop!
    You'll never catch me up your tree!