Malcolm vs netsniff-ng

Malcolm is a network traffic analysis suite for security monitoring. It accepts PCAP files, Zeek logs, and Suricata alerts through a browser interface, and can also process live captures forwarded by lightweight sensors. OpenSearch Dashboards provides visualizations, while Arkime helps locate and identify network sessions. Malcolm adds context to session data with GeoIP, hardware manufacturer lookups, asset inventory mappings, and JA4 fingerprints. It analyzes documented protocols including DNS, HTTP, Modbus, and BACnet. Deployment uses Docker or Podman containers, with Kubernetes instructions for on-premises or AWS environments. A dedicated server requires at least 8 CPU cores and 24 GB of RAM; the developers recommend 16 or more cores and at least 32 GB for an optimal experience. The interface requires authentication, with TLS-encrypted local basic authentication, LDAP, and Keycloak options. Malcolm is self-hosted and free under the Apache License 2.0.

netsniff-ng is a free Linux network analyzer and toolkit for network development, debugging, analysis, auditing, and reconnaissance. It captures, analyzes, replays, and redirects traffic using zero-copy packet mechanisms, with live capture, command-line operation, display filters, and offline trace analysis. Supported capture files include tcpdump-capable pcap, a nanosecond-resolution tcpdump-capable variant, Alexey Kuznetzov's pcap, and netsniff-ng pcap. Low- and high-level filtering include Berkeley Packet Filter expressions. The toolkit combines netsniff-ng, trafgen, mausezahn, ifpps, curvetun, astraceroute, flowtop, and bpfc. Its dissector covers Ethernet, WLAN, ARP, MPLS, VLAN, LLDP, IPv4, IPv6, ICMP, IGMP, TCP, and UDP. Mausezahn and curvetun are experimental and not advised for production. The toolkit is GPL 2.0 open source. Release checks use Git tags and GPG signatures; support is through a mailing list and online FAQ.