Snort

Required Software

• Libpcap
• PCRE
• Libnet
• Barnyard

Note to Windows users: If you’re downloading Snort binaries the only requirements are WinPcap and Barnyard.

Libpcap

In the field of computer network administration, pcap (packet capture) consists of an application programming interface (API) for capturing network traffic. Unix-like systems implement pcap in the libpcap library; Windows uses a port of libpcap known as WinPcap.

Monitoring software may use libpcap and/or WinPcap to capture packets traveling over a network. libpcap and WinPcap also support saving captured packets to a file and reading files containing saved packets. Snort uses these files to read network traffic and analyze it.

For more information and to download please visit tcpdump

PCRE

Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) is a regular expression C library inspired by Perl’s external interface, written by Philip Hazel. The PCRE library is incorporated into a number of prominent open-source programs such as the Apache HTTP Server, the PHP and R scripting languages, and Snort.

For more information and to download please visit PCRE

Libnet

Libnet is a generic networking API that provides access to several protocols.

For more information and to download please visit libnet

Barnyard

Barnyard is a output system for Snort. Snort creates a special binary output format called ``unified.’’ Barnyard reads this file, and then resends the data to a database back-end. Unlike the database output plugin, Barnyard manages the sending of events to the database and stores them when the database temporarily cannot accept connections.

To download Barnyard click here

Next: Download Snort