View All Active Connections To Your Pc

[XGhozt 410]

And by PC I mean Personal Computer. I believe this works on Windows/Mac/Linux. Although I only tested it on Windows. I needed a way to view all the connections to my computer as they where happening. You can use this for many purposes. For example checking if you have a virus/trojan making an active connection to your PC; this would help at least point it out. Aside from that you might just be curious as to what your computer connects to and when.

 

Do the the following: Open the command prompt/terminal:

 

Windows: Start > Run > CMD

Mac: Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Terminal

 

Type the following: netstat

 

Now, you will get flashed with various IP's/random stuff that your computer is connected to. You can type netstat -h or netstat /help for more information. Here are some tricks:

 

netstat 1

- This will refreash the screen every 1 second.

 

netstat -v

- This will display all the information with the IP only, not the DNS.

 

EG: netstat -v 1

 

Would combine them both. Read more on the help screen for other ideas. What I do is set it to netstat 1 and make the window smaller. It refreashs every 1 second while I open programs or browse the net. I can view all the connections my computer makes to any other server. You can learn a few things about programs you run. For example; if you had a 3rd party program and you wanted to know if it was connecting to host/server when the program started. You can even find out what port it used!

 

Goodluck,

Tutorial by XGhozt.

[Grump 0]

Very interesting read.

 

This might help the computers here on campus