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A Network Sniffer On Steroids

Posted by kdawson on from the data-seepage dept.

QuantumCrypto writes "Errata has developed a new network sniffer, dubbed 'Ferret,' that looks for traffic using 25 protocols, including those for the popular instant message clients as well as DHCP, SNMP, DNS and HTTP. This means the sniffer will capture requests for network addresses, network management tools, Web sites queries, Web traffic and more. 'You don't realize how much you're making public, so I wrote a tool that tells you,' said Robert Graham, Errata's chief executive. Errata has released the source code to this version 1.0, 'feature-poor and buggy' tool on its site. Anyone with a wireless card will be able to run it, Graham said."

2 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Wireshark? by Hackeron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How is this different to say wireshark or any other traffic analyzer?

  2. EVERYTHING about this article is wrong. by jurgen · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is a great example of the worst of slashdot (which isn't saying much)... just about everything in this article as it appears on the main page is wrong, word for word.
    • Category: YRO... why? What does this have to do with "rights"?

    • Title: "Sniffer on Steroids". Nothing steroidal about it... according to the authors of the software it is a buggy piece of shit whipped up quickly to demonstrate a very /specific/ type of traffic analysis for a talk.

    • "Looks for traffic using 25 protocols". Uh no, it doesn't use the protocols, it analyzes them.

    • List of protocols and applications... misses the point entirely as nothing explicitly as any other sniffer can also "capture" all those protocols. The point is that this program looks for and explicitly points to information within those protocol that you probably didn't realize was "seeping" out with those protocols. Mind you, you could still find all that same information with ANY OTHER SNIFFER... there is nothing technologically new about this sniffer. Rather, the authors have made a list of things that "seep" out with various applications and protocols that most people haven't thought of, and have written a simple ordinary sniffer that explicitly includes this list.

    • "Anyone with a wireless card will be able to run it"... uhm, yeah, anyone with a WINDOWS machine and the right kind of wireless card. Doh.

    Even for slashdot, that's pretty bad, eh?

    :j