LAN Switch Security: What Hackers Know About Your Switches

A practical guide to hardening Layer 2 devices and stopping campus network attacks

• Learn the truth about how easily hackers can exploit Ethernet switches
• Explore the various vulnerabilities that exist is most modern LAN switch environments
• Analyzes potential attacks that can occur targeting Layer 2 devices
• Learn how to protect Ethernet switches against attack

Popular belief is that Ethernet switches are secure. But the security you see may not be the security you get, with issues ranging from switch implementation, to control plane protocols, to data plane protocols like ARP or DHCP.

LAN Switch Security explains all the vulnerabilities in a network infrastructure related to Ethernet switches and helps you secure them. The book shows you how to configure a switch to prevent or to mitigate attacks based on those vulnerabilities. It also includes a section on how to use an Ethernet switch in order to increase the security of a network and prevent future attacks.

Divided into four parts, LAN Switch Security provides you with a practical guide to steps you can take to ensure the integrity of both voice and data traffic that travels over Layer 2 devices. The first part covers multiple protocols, including Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), DHCP, IPv.6, HSRP, and others. The second part addresses denial of services (DoS) attacks on an Ethernet switch and shows how those attacks can be mitigated. The third part presents how a switch can actually augment the security of a network through the utilization of wirespeed ACL processing and IEEE 802.1x for user authentication and authorization. The fourth part of the book examines future developments from the LinkSec working group at the IEEE.

This book is the first to delve into LAN security, and it is essential to any comprehensive security plan.