Tripwire
From Freepedia
A tripwire, generically, consists of a passive triggering mechanism, usually/originally a wire attached to some device for detecting or reacting to physical movement. From this basic meaning, several extended and metaphorical uses of the term have developed.
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Minelaying
Military usage may designate as a "tripwire" a wire attached to one or more mines - normally bounding and fragmentation type mines - in order to increase their activation area. Pressure on or the breaking of this tripwire will result in activation of the mine fuze.
Computer software
Tripwire Inc.
Tripwire, a company based in Portland, Oregon, produces change-auditing software. The Linux open source intrusion-detection system (see below) forked from a version of one of the company's products, first released publicly by Purdue University in 1992.
Tripwire Inc. pioneered, entirely or in part, many techniques used for host-based intrusion detection. In many senses, recent efforts at managing security on computers, such as the Trusted Computing Group's trusted platform module form extensions of these ideas and techniques wrapped up in a piece of silicon that runs external to the CPU and that thus has more security.
Open source tool
The open-source software tool called Tripwire functions as a host-based intrusion detection system. It does not concern itself directly with detecting intrusion attempts in real time at the periphery of a computing system (as in network intrusion detection systems), but rather looks for and reports on the resultant changes of state in the computing system under observation.
Intruders usually leave traces of their activities (changes in the system state). Tripwire looks for these by monitoring key attributes of files that should not change, including binary signatures, size, expected changes in size, etc. - and reporting its findings.
While useful for detecting intrusions after the event, it can also serve many other purposes, such as integrity assurance, change management, policy compliance, and more.
Band
Tripwire is also a New Zealand alternative-rock band based in the South Island of New Zealand.
External links
Categories: Corporation stubs | Computer security | Companies based in Oregon | Businesses in Portland, Oregon | Software companies
