Colasoft Capsa

[acantho]

I found this prog and was wondering if anyone had any experience of it ?

From what I've skim read about it, you can use it to monitor your own network, or one that you have access to, and intercept emails, http, IM conversations and just about anythng else that travels accross the network. Thus you could read peoples emails, conversations and see what sites they are on and presumably what logins and pwords they are using !

I couldn't afford this program if I even wanted it, but the thing that worries me about it is that at work I regularly download movies and tv shows via megaupload links. (I always thought these where relatively safe from being pried upon as the download url would be of the form megaupload.com then random numbers & letters.) So the system admin on my work network could see exactly what I was downloading and get me in the shit for "missuse of the company internet connection" and they could also access my bank details and then delete the logs and potentially clean out my account - though paying off student loans and my credit card means there is barely any money in it the day after I get paid anyway : Added to that there would be a digital trail as to where the meagre ammont had went.

Firstly is it possible to do as I menttion above and if it is, is there away to protect/hide/obfuscate the info as it travels accross the network, thus allowing me to continue downloading with immpunity ?

[FunctionCreep]

Well yes, many companies do capture data on the internal network to see what the employees are using it for. I've seen keyloggers installed on a company and when I mentioned about removing them, I was told that it was intentional.

Now keep in mind that you can't monitor encrypted protocols which probably your e-bank site uses (at least I hope it does). Or at least I don't think anyone would go into the fuss of doing that.

There are programs out there that run under stealth mode (to a regular user anyways) that will log literally EVERYTHING anyone does by using keylogging/taking screenshots/logging your every fart and other wild stuff and then send all that via email on a nifty .zip for anyone's viewing pleasure.

Also there isn't much you can do for someone sniffing you from the internal network without raising alot of suspision.

The only thing you can easily do is claim that such an act is unethical and shakes your trust to the company you are working for. You could also report them (I have no idea where) since this is your personal information. It is a double sided knife though, because as you understand the company may stand on the fact that you are not there to check on your balance/download porn or whatever.

[fashizzlepop]

Bottom line: don't do anything you don't want people to see on the company network. I'd probably fire you if I found you watchng vids from MegaUpload during working hours.

[acantho]

Ah thanks for that.Function Creep.
@ Fashizzle pop Hey I was still working, only DLing to watch at home, when work has a T1 connection it's always going to be faster than your home onw I was getting DL speeds of over 1MB per sec !

I guess I should just limit my downloading a bit then, well at least during non-term time. Term time lots of network traffic - easier to be less noticable in the crowd I suppose Yeah I'm sure my bank uses encrypetd protocols - I doubt there are any in the UK or most of the Western world that dont.

I can understand why an employer would want to keep an eye on employees 'net usage. JUst brings up the whole ethics of it, say someone is HIV positive and uses the company 'net to read up about it - they see this and then they know something about the person medically that they shouldn't - that opens a whole can of worms I suppose.

I had a lucky escape a few years back when I was an undergrad, was playing about with a mailbomb prog, well using it to get revenge on somebody, and sent a few thousand emails through my universitys server and another unis server on to the person I was "hitting" needless to say it didnt go without a flaw. I managed to accidently bring down two university servers ooops !
Thy had the content of the emails which luckily for me I had sent as blanks with no message title either. So from then on I knew they must log at least some of what was going on over their network.
Got hauled over the coals for it - pleaded ignorance and said I never realised the prog was running I just DLed it to look at it and got off with a severe censure - basically a slap on the wrist. I've been extremely careful ever since then

[lord_hondros]

Hmmm... Cain and Able'll do it for free

[BrianMill1999]

That's how the sniffers of its kind do like this. Why bother, I found a free version out there: http://c.colasoft.com/0LeMHo

[IncandescentLight]

There are many other alternatives instead of paying for a program. What you are looking for are called 'Packet sniffers' and there are a multitude of them available on the internet. One example is WireShark. With it, you can monitor network traffic on your network, meaning if another computer logs in, sends data, has an IM conversation etc. you can find out what data they are sending.

However, WireShark can only intercept the data. I recommend Cain and Abel, also free, and it comes in a pack of tools, such as wireless password cracking, etc. It can intercept encrypted data and if the encryption is recognised it can decrypt the data to reveal passwords and information. If the data is encrypted it is usually personal information data.

[RabbitH0le]

I just checked out the Colasoft site, and it appears there is a free edition. The only difference appears to be the ways you can view and save the information.

[insomaniacal]

This seems to be a glorified program that attempts to perform packet capturing and maybe ARP Poisoning. The only difference is, it probably condenses it all into a nice and easy human readable format. You'd be better off downloading individual tools and learning how they work .

As far as work goes, downloading things like movies (presumably illegally) can get you in trouble. True, you may still be working, but the last thing the Company needs is trouble from their ISP because someone was using their connection to download the latest blockbuster. It's your call to do risk-assessment. I'd be cautious though, especially if they monitor bandwidth usage, and notice that your (presumably again) several GB worth of data is probably something other than for reading company e-mails.

[BrianMill1999]

One question, does it see my emails?