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

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

    5 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 1 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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