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Date:      Wed, 08 Sep 1999 01:29:29 -0700
From:      dmp@aracnet.com
To:        The Mad Scientist <madscientist@thegrid.net>
Cc:        ks@itp.ac.ru, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Layer 2 ethernet encryption?
Message-ID:  <37D61E69.58B806DF@aracnet.com>
References:  <XFMail.990907105629.ks@osi.ru> <4.1.19990907190442.0096ada0@mail.thegrid.net>

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The Mad Scientist wrote:
<snip>
>         I do not claim to understand driver writing, but what about ripping out
> the code that puts the NIC into promiscous mode?

I'm not a software hacker, so I couldn't tell you if that would work,
but disabling that part of the driver might not be such a good idea.

> You would have to modify
> the code that allows the driver to change its MAC address, probably.  But
> if you have good network monitors, you should be able to detect a machine
> that is pretending to be someone else pretty quickly.  It's not encryption,
> but if you're blind, you can't read the written word.  It doesn't solve
> your EM problems either.

If a NIC changed it's MAC, it would loose connectivity.

>         'Course, I guess any user with half a brain could go out and get the
> original driver and put it in place -- this being an open source solution.
> So, I guess it's not such a good idea after all.

Integrity checks withstanding, such a modification would prevent the
machine from connecting to the network.


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