You should tell the staff at your campuss that a Linux box is no greater threat than any of those PC's used for word processing. A packet sniffer can hide itself as a resident program on a doze box and collect data into a data file. Such a program can be installed by any user on the doze box or even spread as a virus. On a Linux box only root programs have access to the ethernet driver. Any packet sniffer programs can therefore only be installed by root. On a Linux box you only allow access to known users and you have log files stating when users have logged in and out. If the machine have been abused in some way you can trace the problem using the log files. Best Regards, Oluf -------------------------------------------------------------------- Oluf Bagger, Eurochip DTU. tlf: +45 4593 3332 lok. 5722 fax: +45 4593 0216