Security Growler

Name: Security Growler
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

2.3

11 November 2016

Menu bar notifier for SSH, FTP, VNC, AFP, or sudo events.

Overview

Security Growler is a menu bar app that will notify you via Notification Center or Growl if any SSH, FTP, VNC, AFP, or Sudo authentication events occur. It's very useful if you're paranoid about people trying to hack into your computer or if you simply like having information about people using your computer's resources. It's easily extensible in python, you can add modules that watch logfiles or processes and do whatever you want. Use Prowl to send the notifications to your iPhone/iPad when you're away.

What's new in Security Growler

Version 2.3:

Fixes the Stop background agent & quit menu-bar item in Security Growler Light.app
Notifies the user when the background agent is killed
Adds menu item to check for updates
Minor code cleanup and refactoring

Security Growler Screenshots

5 Security Growler Reviews

Swo

21 April 2016

Most helpful

This looks similar in functionality to Little Snitch (quite possibly one of the more indispensable applications if you're concerned about security), would you agree?

Like (1)

Version 2.0

Amazing little applet. Nice work & thank you for keeping it free.

Also this goes hand in hand with LittleSnitch and providing easy access to the customise the applet - wow. Really nice work.

Like (1)

Version 2.2

It's still a work-in-progress, I assume, but this is ***great***. Whitelisting functionality would be on my wishlist. I have several background agents running with sudo commands, so for those I wouldn't really need a Notification Center alert. Anyway, love it, and it's recommended.

Like (1)

Version 2.1

4 answer(s)

MichaelHaeusler

27 April 2016

Oh, and the menu bar item could be black&white, at least as an option. Don't like colored icons; always tuck them away in the Bartender menu. ;)

Ipodhakkr

27 April 2016

Actually it is possible to whitelist, but you have to be a bit tech savvy. Edit this file: /Applications/Security Growler.app/Contents/Resources/parsers/sudo.py and add a new clause to the if statement `and not 'your string to exclude' in line:`. See an example here https://github.com/pirate/security-growler/blob/master/parsers/sudo.py#L11

There is a Light Mode version available, but the icon is still colored. Feel free to change the icon in the source code if you feel up to it :)

Like (1)

MichaelHaeusler

27 April 2016

Thank you! That's fine by me.

Prince-Isaac

28 April 2016

"Feel free to change the icon in the source code if you feel up to it :)"

But you'll have to change it again after every update.

Whether this app may have similar functionality as Little Snitch or Murus (advertisement—check this alternative to LS that relies on firewall already at the core of Mac OS X), as mentioned by Swo, which you may or may not happen to use, personally, I find that Security Growler works very well for what it is advertised to do, and it is commendable to create and maintain a free and open source project that cares about your security. And it is very lightweight. 5 stars!

Like (1)

Version 2.0

1 answer(s)

Ipodhakkr

21 April 2016

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words! I love LittleSnitch, it's hands-down the best connection alerting software out there for mac.

SC is meant to serve a slightly different purpose though, as it's more centered around parsing logfiles for any kind of urgent security events, as opposed to just TCP sockets readable from `lsof -i`.

Like (1)

Swo

21 April 2016

This looks similar in functionality to Little Snitch (quite possibly one of the more indispensable applications if you're concerned about security), would you agree?

Like (1)

Version 2.0

1 answer(s)

Ipodhakkr

21 April 2016

The main difference is that while little-snitch alerts you to open TCP sockets, it doesn't alert you to other security events on your computer, such as Sudo, keychain, portscans, etc. Security Growler is built to also use a logfile polling system that watches the normal system logfies and alerts when patterns are found, whereas LittleSnitch just reads from the system network routing table (found from the output of `lsof -i`).

All that said though, I love LittleSnitch and highly recommend it if what you want is the best possible connection alerting app, but I recommend SC if you want a lighter-weight less-intrusive system for only the most essential security alerts.

Like (1)

There is no system.log on my Mavericks box. Sudo logs appear in /var/log/system.log file

Version 1.4

1 answer(s)

Ipodhakkr

29 July 2014

Fixed in v1.5 https://github.com/pirate/security-growler/blob/master/growler.py#L153