Snort

Snort is an advanced network monitoring tool that can allow seasoned PC users with a wide array of security and network-intrusion detection and prevention tools for protecting home PCs, networks, and network usage of standalone apps. It comes bundled with a wide array of rule-based procedures that quickly and reliably can detect abnormal usages of network bandwidth and help you detect intrusions and suspicious packet traffic coming from both inside and outside your local network. Because of its lightweight package, reliable usage, and proven results, Snort has become one of the most widely IDS / IPS software applications, used regularly by advanced PC users, networking managers and security experts from all around the world.

Snort is capable of easily detecting anomalous packet usage by running real-time diagnostics on your networking traffic, using highly sophisticated anomaly-based scanning and detection of particular database signatures. It provides not only real-time alerts but also fully-featured analytics.

For proper integration into your local network, before starting using Snort on your PC you first need to install WinPcap, a popular application for unlocking direct packet access and an ability to read raw network data without any overhead.

The app is most commonly used as a real-time traffic monitoring tool, packet tracker/sniffer, TCP/IP packet logger, security tool, intrusion detector, network analyzing tool, and one early-warning alarm for new and undiscovered network events, exploits and vulnerabilities.

Installation and Use

Because of its enterprise-focus and the requirement of having low-level access to network monitoring, It does not feature a flashy user interface. It comes in a small sub-5 MB installation package that installs the application on your local hard drive quickly. To access the app, you first need to open your CMD (DOS-like) interface and load the app manually. Upon the first use, we recommend loading up the help listing of all available commands by simply typing “snort.exe -h” in your CMD line.

To successfully take full advantage of Snort’s capabilities, you will need to learn to use these commands lines and let them help you detect any anomalous network traffic usage.

Features and Highlights

• World-renowned network intrusion, prevention, and detection tool.
• Real-time analysis of networking traffic and sent packets.
• Rule-based traffic analysis and logging.
• One of the most deployed IDS / IPS software in the world.
• Supports packet recording into directory or database (MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and ODBC)
• Lightweight and fast.
• Reliable and flexible.
• Optimized for all versions of Windows OS.
• 100% FREE!

Note: Requires WinPcap.