Colasoft Blog

We are very excited to share with you that the beta version of Capsa for WiFi is now available to public download. We’re sincerely inviting you to help us test Capsa for WiFi, your valuable feedback will be highly appreciated.

Capsa for WiFi is a powerful and professional wireless network analyzer for 802.11a/b/g/n networks which is compatible with all NDIS 6.0 wireless adapters. Capsa for WiFi shares not only the friendly user interface, but also the great capacity of capturing, analyzing and reporting that Capsa network analyzer has.

Capsa for WiFi Highlights:

 Support 802.11a/b/g/n
 Auto identify and decode with pre-entered WEP/WPA/WPA2 key
 Compatible with all NDIS 6.0 wireless network adapters
 Auto -scan all access points in the air
 Capture all wireless network packets from one or more APs and keep APs records
 Log DNS, Emails (SMPT POP3), FTP, HTTP & IM messages (MSN & Yahoo Messenger)
 Provide customizable analysis profile and 40 expert diagnosed network problems
 Provide powerful and customizable Reports
 Analyze post-events by replaying packet files

Download Capsa for WiFi beta here.

Dear customers, Colasoft Capsa Thanksgiving Big Sale already begun, we promise you can purchase Capsa Network Analyzer at the most favorable price which save you a huge amount of money. Don’t miss this unique opportunity. Just get your coupon now.

50% off for 3 and 5 Seats License.
40% off for 2 Seats License.
30% off for Single Seat License.
20% off for Renewal.

Dear customers, with the big holliday-Thanksgiving’s coming very soon, Colasoft are wishing you a great thanksgiving with Capsa Big Sale. We will provide up to 50% off for our flagship product-Colasoft Capsa Enterprise, you can purchase Capsa at the most favorable price on our Big Sale. Please stay close.

We are so proud to announces the release of Capsa Network Analyzer 7.3.1. A brand-new analysis profile-Security Analysis Profile is added as well as more powerful Reporting Capabilities to enhance user experience.

The newly-designed Security Analysis Profile makes it more convenient and easier for users to find out potential security events with six new customer-requested Views. With Capsa 7.3.1, users can not only choose to open and close specific View, but also set up the sequences of Views to display. Report Logo Preview is available in this version which highly enhances Capsa’s reporting capabilities.

Roy Luo, CEO of Colasoft, states, “This new version addresses users’ requirement of security events analysis and also demonstrate our responsiveness. We only display security-related information in Diagnosis and Matrix Views before, this time we add six Views to broaden the scope of Capsa and provide better analysis experience. We’ll spare no efforts to provide extended capabilities to Capsa.”

New features of Capsa network analyzer 7.3.1:

Unique security analysis profile, analyzing DoS attack, ARP attack, and worm activities, etc
Flexible tab management panel of the main view
Data Storage option on the Start Page for packet and log save settings
Add Report Logo preview in Report Settings

New Views in Security Analysis Profiles:

ARP Attack: detects ARP attack activities and provides source MAC addresses
Worms: detects suspicious worm activities and provides details including source IP addresses
Dos Attacks: detects devices joining in a DoS attack to attack a remote site, and provides details on the devices
Dos Attacked: detects the devices under a DoS attack and provides details on targeted devices to cut off the attack
TCP Port Scan: detects suspicious TCP port scanning activities and details including attacker addresses
Suspicious Conversation: detects suspicious conversations of HTTP, FTP, SMTP and POP3, and provides details to figure out the problem

Capsa 7.3.1 runs under Windows XP/2003/Vista/7. A trial version is available for download at the company’s website: http://www.colasoft.com/

Ian Harac, PC World, Sept 13th, 2010

When a program has a “free” edition, very often, it is just a demo without a time limit, offering only enough functionality to get you to buy the “real” version. Capsa 7 Free is not such a program; it’s a full-featured network traffic monitoring and reporting tool. The features you get for free, without a time limit or unceasing nags, are exceptional.

This high level overview is just the start of Capsa Free; you can drill down very deep to learn more about your network.

Capsa Free provides an ongoing look at everything that passes through a selected network adapter. (This is one of the few limitations of the Free version vs. the Professional and Enterprise versions; you can analyze only one adapter at a time. For most home or small business users, this will not be an issue.) It breaks the data down by protocol and IP address, the latter of which is very interesting from a home user perspective–a days’ casual surfing, captured and analyzed by Capsa, revealed I contacted computers in over a hundred different nations. You can also set it to store packets, with a variety of options for how many to store and how long to keep them. Later, you can rummage through them with Capsa, if you know what you’re looking for (or just want to peek under the hood and understand more about what happens between when you type an address in your browser and when you see a picture of a cat appear on your screen.)

For network administrators in small businesses, Capsa 7 Free is a potent tool with many analysis and testing abilities. With it, you can see what’s happening on your network, whether you want to monitor usage or determine if a connectivity problem really is on your end, You can hand-code packets and then send them to an adapter, in order to see what happens. The ability to set alarms if particular traffic patterns occur can help you see an attack coming and head it off, and there are tutorials on-line to help you do just that.

Capsa Free is a tool for professionals and enthusiasts. A casual home user will not find much use in Capsa Free, though, being free, it doesn’t hurt to check it out. Using it requires either a good knowledge of internet protocols and low level functionality, or a strong desire to learn such things. If most or all of your traffic routes through a single network adapter, you may never see a need to upgrade to the Professional edition, which starts at $549.00.

August 5, 2010.

Colasoft, an innovative provider of all-in-one and easy-to-use network analyzer software, today announces the release of a free network analyzer software-Capsa Free, which is fully functional with no expiry days. The intuitive, simple graphic network analyzer designed for personal and small business use is now totally free to the public. While Wireshark is regarded as the pioneer of the free network analyzer, Capsa is considered as the great combination of Wireshark and Polit, strong capturing ability plus powerful analyzing and reporting abilities. Seems unbelievable? Without any doubt, another great free network analyzer is born.

“Capsa Free is a great combination of powerful network monitoring, in-depth packet decoding, reliable network diagnosing, real-time alerting and thorough reporting ability, it provides you innovative solutions to numerous network problems”, said Roy, Luo, CEO of Colasoft, “as network security is becoming more and more important, by releasing the free but full functional network analyzer, we are hoping to offer a great chance for small business and networking geeks to learn more about network analysis techniques. We believe there will be more and more network analyst, just like “doctor in networking, more and more people are going to use an easy-to-use and powerful network management software. Capsa Free aims to fulfill our goal of largely promoting the popularization of network analysis techniques and make the maximize value of enterprise network.”

Capsa Network Analyzer Free Edition Highlights:

• Your own dashboard, important parameters in one place and in graphs
• Record network Profile, set your analysis objective and perform customized analysis.
• Powerful customizable alarm, customize dozens of alarm trigger combinations.
• Identify and analyze more than 300 network protocols, create and customize protocols, analyze unique protocol traffic.
• Intuitive TCP timing sequence chart.
• Accurate MSN & Yahoo Messenger monitoring statistics.
• Email monitor and auto-saving Email content.
• Enhanced, Customizable Reports.
Capsa Free runs under Windows XP/2003/Vista/7. Download it here.

by David M Williams
July 26, 2010

If you run any type of network infrastructure there will come a time you need a low-level packet sniffer to work out just what is going on. Colasoft’s Capsa product challenges the myth these tools must be hard to use.

Have you ever had users ask why is the network so slow? Chances are high any IT professional will have looked into network related faults but found it difficult to get a handle on just what is going on because Ethernet is so, well, ethereal.

Here is where a network analyzer comes in handy. It will sniff the raw packets of data flying about as they happen and give you meaningful information to make intelligent determinations.

Previously I have talked about the tremendous open source product WireShark but WireShark isn’t for everyone. For one, the Windows port requires GTK+ and Glib to be installed which some Windows administrators aren’t keen to do. For another, although it is less arcane and cryptic than a command-line tool like tcpdump it’s still not user-friendly enough for many.

Here is where Colasoft’s Capsa product comes in. As you might guess, it is a deep low-level network protocol analyzer and its purpose is to give you the low-down on just what is happening on your network.

Where it stands out from the competition is its brilliant ease of use. Capsa adopts the same ribbon style interface as seen in Microsoft Office 2007 and it is a snap to navigate between tabs and check out the options and power available.

When it comes to network analysis so much is going on that it’s a must to separate out the chatter from the data that matters. Capsa makes it a cinch to hone in on what you want with easy to use filters and rules.

Capsa also has a concept of projects, meaning you can set global filters and rules to always apply but also make specific filters and rules for individual projects, letting you switch between these as needed.

Capsa displays intuitive options and is a genuine pleasure to use. I do not believe I’ve seen a more straightforward or elegant network analysis tool with the majority requiring expert knowledge to get any meaningful results.

Capsa is a commercial product so it does carry a price tag beginning at $US 549 for one license without maintenance but if your job requires you to troubleshoot network faults then the software will pay for itself.
As well as the commercial support Colasoft provide an extensive and helpful FAQ. A free trail of Capsa is avaliable here.

Author: Chris Partsenidis
July 3, 2010

Introduction

A Network Analyser is without doubt an Engineer’s best friend.
Using network analysing software, we are able to monitor our network and dig into the various protocols to see what’s happening in real time. This can help us understand much better the theoretical knowledge we’ve obtained throughout the years but, most importantly, help us identify, troubleshoot and fix network issues that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.
A quick search on the Internet will surely reveal many network analysers available making it very confusing to select one. Some network analysers provide basic functions, such as packet sniffing, making them ideal for simple tasks while others give you all the necessary tools and functions to ensure your job is done the best possible way.
Colasoft’s network analyser is a product that falls in the second category. We had the chance to test drive the Colasoft Network Analyser v7.2.1 which is the latest available version at the time of writing.
Having used previous versions of Colasoft’s network analyser, this latest version we tested left us impressed and does, in fact, promise a lot no matter what the environment demands.

Colasoft’s Capsa network analyser is available as a demo version directly from their website www.colasoft.com. We quickly downloaded the 21.8mb file and began the installation which was a breeze. Being small and compact meant the whole process didn’t take more than 30-40 seconds.
We fired up the software, entered our registration details, activated our software and up came the first screen which shows a completely different philosophy to what we have been used to:

The Software
Before you even start capturing packets and analysing your network, you’re greeted with a first screen that allows you to select the network adaptor to be used for the session, while allowing you to choose from a number of preset profiles regarding your network bandwidth (1000, 100, 10 or 2 Mbps).
Next, you can select the type of analysis you need to run for this session ranging from Full analysis, Traffic Monitoring, Security analysis to HTTP, Email, DNS and FTP analysis. The concept of pre-configuring your packet capturing session is revolutionary and very impressive. Once the analysis profile is selected, the appropriate plug-in modules are automatically loaded to provide all necessary information.
For our review, we selected the ‘100Mb Network’ profile and ‘Full Analysis’ profile, providing access to all plug-in modules, which include ARP/RARP, DNS, Email, FTP, HTTP and ICMPv4 – more than enough to get any job done!
Optionally, you can use the ‘Packet Filter Settings’ section to apply filters to the packets that will be captured:

The full review at http://www.firewall.cx/reviews-colasoft-v721.php

June 22, 2010 – Colasoft, an innovative provider of all-in-one and easy-to-use network analyzer software, today announced the newest version 7.2.1 of its flagship product-Capsa network analyzer, which is the combination of powerful monitoring, alerting, and reporting capabilities. In this version, two long-awaited monitors are added in: IM monitor and Email monitor.

Emails are provided to employees as an efficient means of communication, along with this technological advancement are many collateral problems concerning enterprise information security, such as email worm thread, disclosure of trade secrets or other enterprises’ confidential information, etc. Capsa 7.2.1 provides you with powerful email monitoring. With the captured email file, you are accessible not only to basic email information such as client, server, sender name, time, etc, but also to the original content of the email. Capsa 7.2.1 supports auto-saving email content. All of the email information is captured and saved, which will serve as valuable electronic evidence when needed.

MSN (aka Live Messenger) and Yahoo Messenger are two of the most popular chat tools on internet, IM monitoring is a necessary and effective method for enterprises to ensure employees’ work efficiency. Capsa 7.2.1 gives a real-time instant message monitoring and recording. Capsa 7.2.1 is able to deliver the most accurate MSN and Yahoo messenger monitoring statistics which can be exported and saved for further analysis. To some extent, IM monitor helps enterprise achieve effective management as well as improve network and economic performance.

Besides IM and Email monitors, considering our users may have useful project files saved by version 6.9, Capsa 7.2.1 supports opening project file from Capsa 6.9.

Capsa 7.2.1 runs under Windows XP/2003/Vista/7. A trial version is available for download at the company’s website: http://www.colasoft.com/

About Capsa

Capsa is an easy-to-use Ethernet packet sniffer (network analyzer or network sniffer) for network monitoring and troubleshooting purposes. It performs real-time packet capturing, 24/7 network monitoring, reliable network forensics, advanced protocol analyzing, in-depth packet decoding, and automatic expert diagnosing. By giving you insights into all of your network’s operations, Capsa makes it easy to isolate and solve network problems, identify network bottleneck and bandwidth use, and detect network vulnerabilities.

About Colasoft

Ever since 2001, Colasoft has been an innovative provider of all-in-one and easy-to-use software solutions for users to monitor network activities, analyze network performance, enhance network security, and troubleshoot network problems. Currently, more than 5000 customers in over 80 countries trust the company’s flagship product, Capsa Packet Sniffer, as their network monitoring and troubleshooting solution. Featured customers include Alcatel, Airbus, Dell, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, and Pepsi. Learn more about Colasoft and its solutions, please visit http://www.colasoft.com/

We provide some tips on monitorring FBHOLE worm. In this article, we specificlly provide a step by step guide on how to build a fileter and monitor FBHOLE worm with Capsa network analyzer.

1. On the Start Page, click Packet Filter Settings link to open the Filter dialog box, which organizes all the filters.

2. Click the Add button (on the bottom-left corner of the dialog box) to build a new filter.

3.In the new window, choose Advanced Filter tab. And click the And icon. Choose Content from the context menu.

4. In the Pattern Rule window, just enter keyword: fbhole.com in the Pattern text box. Then click OK to close the window.

5. Click OK again to close the Packet Filter window.

6. Check the Accept checkbox of the filter just built which enables the program only capture the packets containing keyword “fbhole.com”.

7. Click OK and then start a capture.

8. If there is already a project running, you’d better stop it to build the filter and restart the capture. To build a filter in a running project: click the Filter button on the Ribbon. You will also see the Filter dialog box as well.