| EtherApe | |
| Developer: | Riccardo Ghetta, Juan Toledo |
| Latest Release Version: | 0.9.20 |
| Programming Language: | C |
| Operating System: | Linux and Unix-like |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Networking |
| License: | GNU General Public License |
EtherApe is a packet sniffer/network traffic monitoring tool, developed for Unix. EtherApe is free, open source software developed under the GNU General Public License.
Network traffic is displayed using a graphical interface. Each node represents a specific host. Links represent connections to hosts. Nodes and links are color-coded to represent different protocols forming the various types of traffic on the network. Individual nodes and their connecting links grow and shrink in size with increases and decreases in network traffic.
Originally authored by Juan Toledo, the first version of EtherApe (version 0.0.1) was released on February 18, 2000. In a 2006 survey, Insecure.org named EtherApe number 43 on its list of the "Top 100 Network Security Tools".[1]
Some of the features listed about EtherApe include (the following list refers to version 0.9.20 of EtherApe):
EtherApe requires root privileges to capture packets (but not to replay captured files). Starting with release 0.9.15 capturing is delegated to a separate process, while the main interface can run with lower privileges, significantly reducing the risk associated with capturing packets from untrusted sources (e.g. Internet).