OpenPacket.org 1.0 Is Live

Nearly three years after the initial post describing the idea , I am happy to report that OpenPacket.org 1.0 is ready for public use, free of charge.

The mission of OpenPacket.org is to provide quality network traffic traces to researchers, analysts, and other members of the digital security community. One of the most difficult problems facing researchers, analysts, and others is understanding traffic carried by networks. At present there is no central repository of traces from which a student of network traffic could draw samples. OpenPacket.org will provide one possible solution to this problem.

Analysts looking for network traffic of a particular type can visit OpenPacket.org, query the OpenPacket.org capture repo for matching traces, and download those packets in their original format (e.g., Libpcap, etc.). The analyst will be able to process and analyze that traffic using tools of their choice, like Tcpdump, Snort, Ethereal, and so on.

Analysts who collect their own traffic will be able to submit it to the OpenPacket.org database after they register.

Anonymous users can download any trace that's published. Only registered users can upload. This system provides a level of accountability for trace uploads.

Our moderators will review the trace to ensure it does not contain any sensitive information that should not be posted publicly. Besides appearing on the site, once a trace has been published you can receive notice of it via this published trace RSS feed.

If you have any doubt regarding the publication of a trace, do not try to submit it. When moderators are unsure of the nature of a trace, we will reject it. OpenPacket.org is not a vehicle for publishing enterprise data as contained in network traffic.

I would like to thank all the people who submitted suggestions and did feature testing via the openpacket-devel mailing list. If you have issues regarding usage of the site, consider subscribing to the openpacket-users mailing list or post to the OpenPacket.org Forums.

As time permits I will probably post more on how to use OpenPacket.org strictly on the OpenPacket Blog. I will minimize cross-posting to TaoSecurity Blog and OpenPacket Blog.

I save my final thanks for Sharri Parsell, our Web developer, and JJ Cummings for hosting OpenPacket.org. Without your work we would not have a site!