Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 10:35:58 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, Huang Min <hmin@public.cta.cq.cn> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Promiscuous mode? Message-ID: <19990409103558.R2142@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.03.9904081220250.25113-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu>; from Doug White on Thu, Apr 08, 1999 at 12:22:14PM -0700 References: <370C27D0.3E66BEAB@public.cta.cq.cn> <Pine.BSF.4.03.9904081220250.25113-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu>
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On Thursday, 8 April 1999 at 12:22:14 -0700, Doug White wrote: > On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Huang Min wrote: > >> hi, everybody, >> >> What's Promiscuous mode? > > Promiscuous (sp?) mode is a special mode of an Ethernet card to receive > all frames on the network instead of just those addressed to it's own > Ethernet address or the broadcast address. > >> Would it make any security problems? > > It's mainly used for traffic sniffers. Programs like tcpdump and trafshow > will put the interface in promiscious mode so they can do their job. If > you don't knw where this came from, be worried about just who has root > access to your box. In fact, promiscuous mode (or, more specifically, how you use it) is less of a security problem to you than it is to everybody else on the net. It enables people to monitor connections which have nothing to do with them. It also means that when you go to meetings like USENIX, you shouldn't connect to your home machine with telnet; somebody on the net might get your password. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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