Cheops Network User Interface
=============================
Mark Spencer <markster@marko.net>
http://www.marko.net

What is Cheops?
---------------
Cheops is a network "swiss army knife".  It's "network neighborhood" done right
(or gone out of control, depending on your perspective).  It's a combination
of a variety of network tools to provide system adminstrators and users with
a simple interface to managing and accessing their networks.  Cheops aims to
do for the network what the file manager did for the filesystem.

Location:
---------
http://www.marko.net/cheops    (home page)
ftp://ftp.marko.net/pub/cheops (FTP site:  look here for newest releases)

But reports can be e-mailed to me (Mark Spencer) at markster@marko.net, but
any questions answered in the FAQ at the main cheops page will not be
answered.  Suggestions and ideas for improving it are welcomed.

Build:
------
(Note: If you run a libc5 system, you will need to edit the Makefile.  Also
 if you want to enable GNOME support, edit the Makefile)

Type "make" and (optionally) "make install"


Run: 
----
Run "cheops" (or "./cheops" if you did not do the "install" part).  Cheops
does not yet use any command line options, however, you can set the
CHEOPS_HOME environment variable to the place cheops should look for its
pixmaps and configuration file.

Mechanics:
----------
While the interface that cheops provides is new, he mechanics of 
its operation are nothing new:

* Simple ICMP "ping" packets are used to initially search a network for
  hosts that are alive. (ping)

* Domain Name Transfers are used to list hosts in a domain (nslookup)

* OS detection is done using invalid flags on TCP packets (queso)

* Port detection is done (somewhat) silently using half-open TCP
  connections in order to avoid unnecessarily starting
  services or logging on the remote machine. (halfscan)

* Mapping is done using UDP (or optionally ICMP) packets with small
  time-to-live values (traceroute and mtr, respectively)

Notes:
------
It requires GTK but should build with gtk 1.0 or 1.1 series.

This *IS NOT* designed to be a hacker tool, and you *MAY NOT* use it to
explore domains you do not have authorization to access.  I do not take any
responsibility for use of this tool on unauthorized domains!

Distribution is governed by the GPL, included in this archive.

Credits:
--------
halfscan:  halflife@saturn.net
queso:     savage@apostles.org
