Submission + - Little Snitch comes to Linux to expose what your software is really doing (nerds.xyz)
BrianFagioli writes: Little Snitch, the long-time macOS network monitoring tool, is now getting a Linux version. The developer says the idea came from experimenting with Linux personally and realizing how strange it felt not knowing what connections the system was making. Existing Linux tools like OpenSnitch and various command-line utilities exist, but none offered the same simple workflow of seeing which process is connecting where and blocking it instantly. The new Linux version uses eBPF for kernel-level traffic interception, with the core written in Rust and a web-based interface that even allows monitoring remote Linux servers from another device.
During testing on Ubuntu, the developer noticed something interesting. Over the course of a week, only nine system processes made internet connections. On macOS, similar testing reportedly showed more than 100 processes communicating externally. Of course, applications behave similarly across platforms, and launching Firefox immediately triggered connections to telemetry and advertising endpoints, while LibreOffice made no network connections at all. The project is still early and not positioned as a full security firewall, but rather a transparency tool designed to show what software is actually doing on the network and let users block connections if they choose.
During testing on Ubuntu, the developer noticed something interesting. Over the course of a week, only nine system processes made internet connections. On macOS, similar testing reportedly showed more than 100 processes communicating externally. Of course, applications behave similarly across platforms, and launching Firefox immediately triggered connections to telemetry and advertising endpoints, while LibreOffice made no network connections at all. The project is still early and not positioned as a full security firewall, but rather a transparency tool designed to show what software is actually doing on the network and let users block connections if they choose.
