parsing very large tcpdump files

["Tom" <digitalevidence () excite com>]

moderator: sorry if this is vague.  My requirements are not fixed yet and will probably change from case to case, 
therefore I am just looking for generic info now.

I was wondering if anyone on this list can recommend some tools (Opensource or commercial) to automate the parsing of 
very large (many GB) tcpdump files.  I am trying to put together a generic toolset but in general some things I'd like 
to do are:

1. Filter out traffic to/from a specific IP address or range
2. Reconstruct all reconstructable sessions in an easy to parse way: emails, web sites visited (and content 
uploaded/downloaded), voip, anything else imaginable.
3. Be able to search all of this data for keywords. 

This may seem like a tall order.  I know of a few tools to do individual tasks on a small scale, such as mailsnarf, 
vomit, ethereal,  etc. but it's not practical to use ethereal to parse these by hand. I've tried chaosreader.pl but it 
bogs down on files as small as 200 MB.

I'd appreciate any input.

Thanks.



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