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Date:      Fri, 19 Jan 96 9:45:41 MET
From:      marino.ladavac@aut.alcatel.at
To:        davem+@andrew.cmu.edu (David J Meltzer)
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ethernet packet sniffer.
Message-ID:  <9601190845.AA03214@atuhc16.atusks01.aut.alcatel.at>
In-Reply-To: <skzh2J200YUx4rfdQY@andrew.cmu.edu>; from "David J Meltzer" at Jan 18, 96 5:58 pm

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> Excerpts from internet.computing.freebsd-questions: 18-Jan-96 Re:
> ethernet packet sniffer. by marino.ladavac@aut.alcat 
> > > Mike, I'm not saying it would be practical, but if her networking 
> > > department happens to have a Time Domain Reflectometer, which is common 
> > > communications equipment for high speed cables (many cable companies have 
> > > one) then every tap can be detected.  A TDR would spot everything, even 
> > > unused BNC taps.
> >  
> > So would a Frequency Domain Reflectometer.
> >  

> Is this for a connection made/not made, or can it actually determine if
> a ethernet card on the network is being run in promiscuous mode or not, which
> I think was the original question (and if so, could someone explain how)?

Oh, no, there were a couple of posts in the meantime.  All any kind of
reflectometer could detect is whether an "unofficial" tap has been
attached to the cable (we're talking about coax here; twisted pair has
no such problems.)

Nothing that I know of cannot detect whether someone has taken over a
machine and changed its card to promiscuous mode, if the perp had good
enough software.  But then, a physically taken machine is much easier
to visually inspect than some secret tap in a cabling duct.

/Alby

>        /-------------\
>        |David Meltzer| 
>        |davem@cmu.edu|    
>  /--------------------------\
>  |School of Computer Science|
>  |Carnegie Mellon University|
>  \--------------------------/




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