httpry: Pry into your traffic

Network traffic analysis is a bit over my head, and since I generally only have single-user machines in the house, there’s no mystery about who accessed what site. For a better look at the innards though, httpry is a useful logging tool.

 

On the left, the tool at work; on the right, the fruits of its labor. As you can see, the log is mostly a plain-text dump of transactions, with relevant addresses and commands. In that sense, httpry is really just making a note of all the background noise that makes up your network traffic.

The home page for httpry says it’s not intended as an analytic tool, but it would be possible to perform some rudimentary filtering and screening with httpry, as you might guess from its options. There are also flags for specialized network settings, and for the daemon mode that httpry supports.

If you’re better attuned to network analysis than I, you’ll probably see some value in httpry, if only as a lightweight traffic logging tool. It can serve as the foundation for a more careful inspection, or just as a casual reminder that every interaction leaves a footprint or two. 😉