[ISN] Packet-sniffing techie uncovers spousal infidelity

[InfoSec News]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/30/ethereal_relationship_break-up/

By John Leyden
30th March 2006 

Technology has been instrumental in ending yet another long-standing
relationship. Hot on the heels of tales of a woman who blames a bug in
Firefox for exposing the flaws in her relationship with a fiancé and a
man whose relationship was hit by the spam filtering shortcomings of
Thunderbird, comes the story of a software programmer who unearthed
evidence of his partner's infidelity using Ethereal, the packet
sniffing software.

Len Holgate usually writes about Windows software development and
programming in C++. But in a break from the norm he recently wrote
about how he installed (with some difficulty) a packet sniffer on his
network after becoming suspicious that Michelle, his partner of 17
years, was cheating on him.

"The sniffer provided me with evidence that Michelle had been having
an affair since mid-January. I confronted her and we decided to try
and see if we could 'work it out' during our ski trip to Colorado.  
During the trip I decided that the relationship couldn't continue and
so on our return she moved out. We're currently doing the separation
of assets thing. We hope to be able to remain friends. Since I don't
hate her, I figure that nobody else is allowed to," Len writes.

The coder offers the following sage advice to the less technically
adept: "If you plan to use technology when cheating it's probably best
to understand the technology involved better than the person that
you're cheating on," he adds.

We'd add that if you maintain any kind of relationship you might want
to throw out your computer and mobile and invest in an abacus, if
recent Reg stories (and a thread on digg.com generated by Len's post)  
are anything to go by. ®