Busy iMac

[dedub]

Hello, I decided to download and run ethernal to see what my iMac was doing in the background. Well, within 1 minute I had about 2000 packets captured that were very similar to this one. I can give a whole packet capture .txt file if needed but does anyone know why my Mac is so busy with these packets on the Ethernet adapter?


...........n..E...i...........
...n.5...vaf9............236.1
36.13.0.in-addr.arpa..........
...*0.7.a.root-servers.net..dn
s-ops.arin.Fw.,(..............
*0

 

[dedub]

Update:
I downloaded and used another network analyzer program called Wireshark. It was a much better program and had more details. If anyone cares that is a UDP packet for SNMP. Basically it is my computer talking to my network printer.

 

[jaynorris]

ok... yeah, Wireshark and "Ethereal" are the same... Last release of Ethereal was 0.99, with Wireshark picking up the new rev.

Mac OS is nosier on the wire than most all other OS's, including Windows. With the right Passive sniffer you can get a lot of data about the Mac. Just check out the Data Seepage: How to Give Attackers a Roadmap to Your Network Brief from Errata Security. http://www.erratasec.com/BH_DC_07_Data_seepage.ppt <-- a long brief, but towards the end it gets interesting.