Switch's CAM table poisoning attack: Hands-on lab exercises for network security education

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Teaching offensive techniques is a necessary component of a computer security education and yields better security professionals than teaching defensive techniques alone. In this paper, we describe a case study of the implementation of comprehensive hands-on lab exercises that are essential to security education. The first hands-on lab exercise is about how to perform a Denial of Service (DoS) attack based on the poisoning of the CAM tables (Content Access Memory) of Local Area Network (LAN) switches. The second exercise is about how to prevent CAM table poisoning attack. The hands-on labs confirmed further the ethical and legal concerns regarding the teaching of offensive techniques in the academic environment. In fact, the number of injected malicious traffic targeting the university switches' CAM tables, increased considerably each time the students experiment the DoS attack. That is why every course in IT security should be accompanied by a basic discussion of legal implications and ethics.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputing Education 2012 - Proceedings of the 14th Australasian Computing Education Conference, ACE 2012
EditorsMichael de Raadt, Angela Carbone
PublisherAustralian Computer Society
Pages113-120
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781921770043
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2012
Event14th Australasian Computing Education Conference, ACE 2012 - Melbourne, Australia
Duration: Jan 31 2012Feb 3 2012

Publication series

NameConferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology Series
Volume123
ISSN (Print)1445-1336

Conference

Conference14th Australasian Computing Education Conference, ACE 2012
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityMelbourne
Period1/31/122/3/12

Keywords

  • DoS attack
  • Security port
  • Switch CAM table poisoning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Information Systems
  • Software

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