[sloow]

I'm wondering if people are using any monitoring software for the ip traffic in and out of their computers? Is net barrier any good, buggy or whatever? Do people find others snooping around their machine while on line? Just how visible are Macs to the general population?

I am still using OS9 and OSX pretty well equally, so if there's software that works in both, excellent!

Thanks,


sloow

 

[jfpoole]

sloow wrote:
I'm wondering if people are using any monitoring software for the ip traffic in and out of their computers?

What sort of monitoring do you want to do? I've been using <code>iftop</code> under Linux (it's available for Mac OS X, too) and it works quite well. It monitors the bandwidth usage on a per-connection basis, so it gives you a good idea of who's connected to your machine and how much bandwidth they're using.

Of course, it's a console application, and it won't work under Mac OS 9, so it might not be what you're looking for....

 

[sloow]

I guess all I really want to do is see how much and what is going in and out of the computer. If there was a way to see when passwords, credit card #'s, etc were being transferred that would be helpful.

 

[jfpoole]

sloow wrote:
I guess all I really want to do is see how much and what is going in and out of the computer. If there was a way to see when passwords, credit card #'s, etc were being transferred that would be helpful.

If you want to see the information going out over one of your network interfaces, you can use <code>tcpdump</code>, which ships with Mac OS X (you can get more information by typing <code>man tcpdump</code> from the Terminal). Since it shows you everything, the amount of information it presents is, well, overwhelming.

As for being able to detect when credit card numbers, passwords, etc, are being transmitted, well, that's a hard problem. Tools like <code>tcpdump</code> only show you what's being sent over your network, and make no attempt to interpret the data[1]. Also, if the data is encrypted (e.g., you're accessing a secure webserver), the encrypted data won't make any sense at all.

I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't, let me know and I'll see if I can clarify it.

[1] You might be able to interpret the data on a connection-by-connection basis, but there's no general way to determine if a stream of data contains, say, a password.

 

[sloow]

Do you have any experience with Net Barrier?

 

[jfpoole]

sloow wrote:
Do you have any experience with Net Barrier?

No, sorry. Most of the time my Mac is behind a firewall, so I don't really have to worry about random hacker attempts.

 

[iGeeK]

I've been using iftop under Linux (it's available for Mac OS X, too)
-----

So, I just tried to compile iftop, and I have been told that there's no gcc, no cc on my machine...

Oooops! Where's the C compiler for OS X?

Cheers,

G/<

 

[jfpoole]

Grzegorz Kryszczuk wrote:
Oooops! Where's the C compiler for OS X?

If you don't have the Developer Tools CD (it should have come with your copy of OS X, shouldn't it?), you can download the Developer Tools from Apple.

I tried to configure iftop for OS X, and configure gets confused when it comes to POSIX threads. Erf.

 

[iGeeK]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jfpoole:
Grzegorz Kryszczuk wrote:
Oooops! Where's the C compiler for OS X?

If you don't have the Developer Tools CD (it should have come with your copy of OS X, shouldn't it?),<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I suppose it does come in the box, when you buy OS X >separately<. But it does not seem to be in the CD envelope that came with my G4.

Downloading. Erf.

Cheers,

G/<

 

[sloow]

The Developer Tools is in the software restore CD's that come with OSX on your G4. At least that's where it is in my package. My machine came with Jaguar.. I don't know what the restore CD package is like with other versions of X

 

[iGeeK]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by sloow:
The Developer Tools is in the software restore CD's that come with OSX on your G4.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

D'oh! Well, I had no reason to restore anything yet, and thus haven't looked at them.

In any case, I'm on my merry way back into UNIX gutdom : http://fink.sourceforge.net/

Been sometime, I need to restore my brain.

Cheers,

G/<

 

[Chealion]

I've been using NetPulse (a widget for Konfabulator) and well it seems to be working very nicely...

 

[gordguide]

NetPulse on Konfabulator:

The Widget was cool, but:
It has default transparency, so it's visible on top of (or underneath, depending on how you look at it) you open windows. Fine, so far.
Try to click in an open document window under the widget; no worky. Not fine anymore.

 

[jfpoole]

gordguide wrote:
Try to click in an open document window under the widget; no worky. Not fine anymore.

I don't think there's a way to get Konfabulator widgets to pass mouse clicks to the window beneath them (which is unfortunate).

 

[Chealion]

If NetPulse would just stay in the background, it would be much nicer... maybe they'll release an update for it.