I often watch my network traffic in an idly interested way, networks being more or less incomprehensible to me. (I can watch the network actiivity and identify various bits of it, even enjoying picking my own passwords out of the ether.  I can reproduce the 7-layer model perfectly adequately. I don’t have a mental model of how they connect together. I sometimes almost grasp it but, half a minute later, it’s like knitting fog.)

I have recently noticed lots of packets with “bogus IP headers” or “malformed” or zero length packets, according to Ethereal. From my limited knowledge this tends to indicate a Trojan attack – no novelty to me, who appears to be Helen with regard to Trojans.

In the past few days, I’ve also noticed loads of packets that say “packet cable lawful intercept.”  It turns out that this is due to Ethereal confusing VOIP traffic with “lawful intercept” traffic. 

The concept interested me so I did some research. In case you don’t know what “lawful intercept” is, it seems that it means that your traffic has to be open to surveillance. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to understand. In fact it’s not even within loudhailer shouting distance of the easiest thing in the world to understand. That’s my excuse for not explaining it here.

Try googling http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=packet+cable+lawful+intercept&meta= if you think you’ll be able to make head or tale of it. It disturbs me, but then I’m  probably just clinging to an outdated view that personal privacy was supposed to be one of the benefits of not living in a totalitarian state…..