Snort is a GPLed, Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) that runs on Linux and Win32. A NIDS monitors the network, looking for hostile traffic. Basically it scans all traffic on a network interface, not just its own host's, comparing it to rules describing the signatures of known attacks.

Out of the box, Snort warns about almost anything remotely suspicious. If it is listening on an Internet connection, this means a lot of warnings, many of them no threat (e.g., MacOS attacks on an Intel-only site). The real threats are often buried in the deluge of non-critical information. At first, I added custom rules, disabled built-in rules, re-enabled them, swinging back and forth between terseness and completeness with no resolution in sight.

By Jeffrey Taylor at Unix Review.

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