Enhancing the comprehension of network sniffing attack in information security education using a hands-on lab approach

Sniffing attack is a common network attack and a fundamental topic to information security education. The sniffing attack is usually used by malicious users to spy network traffic, and to collect confidential and sensitive information. With the objective of enhancing information security education, this paper discusses what fundamental security concepts and hands-on skills the students need to know and acquire about network sniffing attack, respectively. The learning objective of the discussed hands-on lab exercises is to teach students how to practically sniff network traffic in an isolated network laboratory environment and detect hosts preforming sniffing activities. The paper does so in the hope that it will encourage the teaching of sniffing attack topic when offering courses on network security, using a hands-on approach. The paper discusses also the implications of the offered hands-on lab exercises on the students' performance and learning outcomes.