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. 😉

hunt: The god of doorways

I am behind the power curve now, because of some frightening technical issues that cropped up in the past 24 hours or so.

Nothing network related (this time); instead, one of my external drives I use for a data archive (think: family photos and scanned documents) began spitting out errors.

It was suspect for at least a few days beforehand, with slow transfers and suspicious behavior. Luckily I copied everything off there — in the conventional manner, with no error messages — before some 20- to 30-hour tests.

It’s disappointing mostly because I bought that drive only a little more than a year ago, and anticipated it lasting much, much longer.

Rather than rant against the state of affairs in the hard drive industry, I’ll show you hunt.

That’s what hunt looks like if you don’t invoke superuser privileges. Something roguelike, multiplayer, with vi-ish movement and a text-based display.

Here’s what it looks like if you can rank yourself among those with godlike powers.

Not a game, at all. Now we’re into specific network security functions, and as you can see from the menu options, they don’t mince words. Depending on the level of mischief you intend, hunt puts you in the driver’s seat.

I won’t pretend I know much about those things, mostly because I don’t know much about those things. All pretension aside, you’ll need to look elsewhere for a tutorial. I’m clueless.

On the other hand, I give hunt an extra point for — depending on your perspective — including a nontrivial roguelike as a time-waster … or as a distraction for the masses, keeping them ignorant and pacified.

Screenshots are Debian; the AUR version wouldn’t build for me. Plus one for the red swirly team. 😉