Sort++

Snort is the foremost Open Source Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) in the world. Snort IPS uses a series of rules that help define malicious network activity and uses those rules to find packets that match against them and generates alerts for users.

Snort can be deployed inline to stop these packets, as well. Snort has three primary uses: As a packet sniffer like tcpdump, as a packet logger — which is useful for network traffic debugging, or it can be used as a full-blown network intrusion prevention system. Snort can be downloaded and configured for personal and business use alike.

Here are some key features of Snort++:
- Support multiple packet processing threads
- Use a shared configuration and attribute table
- Use a simple, scriptable configuration
- Make key components pluggable
- Autodetect services for portless configuration
- Support sticky buffers in rules
- Autogenerate reference documentation
- Provide better cross platform support
- Facilitate component testing
- Use a shared network map