RE: A Solution for sniffing

["Janssen, Steph" <s.janssen () ictk wegener nl>]

I'm afraid it only brings a small amount of safety. Also the Promiscous part
is getting a bit different.

Nowadays most people who sniff, sniff using tools that poison your
arp-cache, in your switches. http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/ is a good
example of these foul tools. They are to easy to use too. My hobby is
lanparties, and I've seen many kids visiting using it. They don't understand
a bit of what they're doing, but hey, it delevers them passwords.

This makes the machine sniffing you the machine in the middle, and would it
detect an ssh-connection, it wil "put you through" like a receptionist, that
way maintaining two sessions. One with you, and one with the server you
think you are directly connected with. There are quite some tools that are
capable of detecting such things (for instance the sniffer named above), but
the safest thing to do against this, is configuring your switches and such
in a way you can only change your mac-adress once or twice a day. Mac-adres
poisoning is done by telling switches and machines constantly you are those
macs. If you locked your switches to a mac a day per port, you would loose
your connection on a sniffer attempt, and that would be all you could do! :)

So, the days that just ssh, or a switched network would help you out are
over. I'm still waiting for good remedies, and descent anti-material, or
detection for it... Though snort (http://www.snort.org/) and such tools can
often easily detect the event, it's still a problem. Detection doesn't solve
anything, and tracing cables and ports in switches isn't a fun and quick
thing neither...

Kind regards,

Steph Janssen

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Peter Letford [mailto:peter () letford co uk] 
Verzonden: woensdag 18 december 2002 18:31
Aan: security-basics () securityfocus com
Onderwerp: Re: A Solution for sniffing

Not sure but somebody else may have said this.

You could employ an IP level encryption using IPSec or tunnel your data
through SSH to another machine that they aren't going to be sniffing and
then to the internet?

Then atleast whilst you try and solve who's sniffing your packets, you will
be secure

Peter


----- Original Message -----
From: <fadi () lebrocks com>
To: <security-basics () securityfocus com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:40 AM
Subject: A Solution for sniffing


> Hello Folks,
> I think i am being sniffed by somone on my network, and i was wondering.
is
> there an application to check wether i am being sniffed or not, and if i
> was, how can i fix that ?(like PGP for mail, what about other protocols)
>
> P.S. : Running Linux Slackware 8.1 (if that would help)
>
> cheers,
> Fadi R. Khouja