This ought to annoy most Linux users, both Torrent Freak and The Register are reporting that the ex admin of the torrent site Elite Torrents is being forced to give up the internet or Linux because the monitoring software only works on windows.

We seriously doubt that the government or police agency is going to make a Linux port of the monitoring software, but he might be able to use a virtual machine to solve his problems. Load up a raw Windows OS and then the monitoring software, and if possible tell it to monitor all IP addresses for the machine at the card level by using something like WinPCap to solve that problem. Most of this depends on the capability of the software that the government is using to monitor the computer.

Umm software by lowest bidder, that sounds safe to me. Sarcasm included.

Sk0t, an ex-administrator of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker is to have his internet connection forcibly monitored by the US Government. If that wasn’t bad enough, the monitoring software is Windows based – which means he is being forced to ditch Linux – or face being barred from the internet. Source: Torrent Freak

It would be interesting to see if he can get away with a strip stock Windows, + AV and Spyware, then monitoring software and WinPCap, then build out a virtual machine on top of it for Linux. If anyone has tried to do packet captures, this way let us know if this works. In the mean time, this might be a workable solution for Sk0t, the government, Linux and windows.