I've recently become more aware of the vulnerability of my security and privacy, and as I am starting to find out the extent of my computer's vulnerabilities, I want to make sure these vulnerabilities are fixed.

I use XP Home, and ZoneAlarm (free version) for a firewall. I'm now noticing that there's lots of incoming pings (ICMP) from other computers, and this must be the aftermath of the Blaster (TCP/IP port 135, not so flooded now). I also get regular incoming UDPs, and every half and hour from LockDown2000.com.

This is all getting blocked, but I'd like to know what's in the incoming packets. Can anyone tell me what software I can use to view the incoming packet data for UDP, TCP/IP and ICMP? I want more than flashing 'leds' and IP information - I want to see the full hex/ascii gobbledegook.

Kudos,

I recently downloaded this product, which comes in free trial form:

http://www.diamondcs.com.au/portexplorer

It will do what you need it to do, and the paid version does even more. I haven't tried other software of this type yet, so can't give you comparison info.

Kali

Actually that didn't do what I wanted. I found a much better resource...

After trying out three other things, I just installed NetworkActiv and found it to do the trick. It's easy to install, totally freeware, and very comprehesive for filtering. Worked straight away with no poblems.

I found it listed here:
http://www.webattack.com/Freeware/network/fwpacketsniffer.shtml

Ethereal is a free network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, viewing summary and detail information for each packet. Ethereal has several powerful features, including a rich display filter language and the ability to view the reconstructed stream of a TCP session.

Ethereal

This is what I use when I am really looking hard at my data traffic.