View source for Libpcap

libpcap stands for packet capture library.  It provides a portable interface on top of packet sniffers such as [[Bpf|BPF]] and others.  It allows you to write your program on Linux and chances are that it'll work on BSD as well.  The same people who wrote [[tcpdump]] wrote libpcap and the one relies on the other to build.

Spooks and law enforcement are often interested in libpcap, however it can do a lot more than keeping an eye on your data as in [[sniff]]ing