README for driftnet
$Id: README,v 1.7 2002/06/10 21:25:48 chris Exp $
Driftnet watches network traffic, and picks out and displays JPEG and GIF images for display. It is an horrific invasion of privacy and shouldn't be used by anyone anywhere. It can also extract MPEG audio data from the network and play it. If you live in a house with thick walls, this may be a useful way to find out about your neighbours' musical taste.
To compile, read the Makefile and make any changes required, then type `make' and fix the errors which get displayed. Driftnet is at a very early stage of development and probably won't work for you at all.
You will need libpcap, libjpeg and libungif. On most Linux distributions these are available as packages. If you don't want a version of driftnet which will display images itself, but just want to use it to gather images for some other application, you only need libpcap -- see comments in the Makefile for more information. To play MPEG audio, you need an MPEG player-- by default, driftnet will use mpg123.
Driftnet needs to run with sufficient privilege to obtain raw packets from the network. On most systems, this means running it as root.
If you find this program entertaining, you might want to help me develop it. The TODO file contains a list of yet-to-be-done ideas.
Driftnet is licensed under the GNU GPL. See the file COPYING in the distribution.