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Date:      Thu, 09 Sep 1999 10:50:30 -0700
From:      Deepwell Internet <freebsd@deepwell.com>
To:        "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>, freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Lisen only NIC
Message-ID:  <4.2.0.58.19990909104023.00d0d7e0@mail1.dcomm.net>
In-Reply-To: <199909091742.KAA18619@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>
References:  <199909091721.KAA18571@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>

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There was a thread on Bugtraq about 2 months ago called 
"anti-sniffer-sniffer" that went into talking about cutting the Xmit 
capabilities from a NIC.  I only mention this because this thread is going 
the same direction.

Are there certain cards or chipsets that would work well with this idea of 
disabling a trace on the NIC itself?  It seems as though most NICs anymore 
are just a single QFP integrated circuit which does all the ethernet 
manipulation as well as any PCI bus interaction.  When I see a NIC anymore 
it's most often just an Integrated Circuit, an isolation transformer, and a 
few surface mount capacitors.  These everything-in-one-chip cards don't 
seem like they'd be good candidates for a project like this, but you can't 
buy anything else in the stores anymore.

Better yet, is there a good candidate ethernet chipset that interacts with 
the ISA bus rather than PCI?  This could be incorporated into a PC-104 
accessory card which would work well on a small standalone box running FreeBSD.

-Terry



> > > No. You'll lose link. Instead, use an external tranceiver and cut the
> > > transmit pin on the AUI end of the tranceiver. Search the BUGTRAQ
> > > archives for URLs to detailed descriptions of how to do this (and why
> > > cutting the transmit pin on a 10BaseT patch cable won't work)
> >
> > Do any of them talk about drilling the trace between the NIC chip and
> > the MAU chip/isolation?  Thats where the ``AUI'' cable is now :-)
> >
> > This is often best done on the input side of the isolation transformer
> > so that the input to the MAU chip is still properly balanced.
>
>Strike that last comment, the isolation transformer location depends on
>the type of MAU, it may be on the wrong side and ends up being the
>same thing as cutting the patch cord.
>What was I thinking!!  Anyway for 10Base2 this is almost always trivial,
>if it has an 8392 MAU chip with a Pulse or Valor transformer it will
>be pins 7 & 8 of the transformer, don't cut pins 9 & 10, you'll unbalance
>the inputs to the MAU and it may oscilate.
>
>Some place I have a nic with 3 dip switches on it ``deaf, dumb, and
>baligerant''.  Basically the switches open up pins 4,5, 7,8 and
>1,2 of the transformer.  Real handy for network lab testing...
>
>--
>Rod Grimes - KD7CAX - (RWG25)                    rgrimes@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net
>
>
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