The Linux Ninja

A new packet capture repository has been launched called pcapr that is sponsored and run by Mu Dynamics.  pcapr appears to be a good alternative to OpenPacket and it supports protocol tagging, searching, and packet viewing in the web browser. Richard Bejtlich of Tao Security and also previously involved with OpenPacket, announced in a blog post earlier this month that he was no longer involved with OpenPacket and one of the reasons was the launching of Pcapr.

Here’s a quick snippet from the pcapr FAQ:

What is pcapr?

Packets are fundamental to how applications and systems communicate with each other and as far as we can tell, there’s no simple way for people to access specific packet sequences to learn, understand, troubleshoot and/or debug these systems. pcapr exists as a repository of these packets, providing full-text search, automatic tagging, viewing and editing of these packets.

I’ve created an account over at pcapr and the features that it offers work well and it is also nice to be able to “preview” the packet capture contents before doing downloading and opening in wireshark for further examination.