Chapter 19 arp guard configuration, 1 introduction to arp guard, Ntroduction to – QTECH QSW-8300 Инструкция по настройке User Manual

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Chapter 19 ARP GUARD Configuration

19.1 Introduction to ARP GUARD

There is serious security vulnerability in the design of ARP protocol, which is any network

device, can send ARP messages to advertise the mapping relationship between IP address

and MAC address. This provides a chance for ARP cheating. Attackers can send ARP

REQUEST messages or ARP REPLY messages to advertise a wrong mapping relationship

between IP address and MAC address, causing problems in network communication. The

danger of ARP cheating has two forms: 1. PC4 sends an ARP message to advertise that the IP

address of PC2 is mapped to the MAC address of PC4, which will cause all the IP messages

to PC2 will be sent to PC4, thus PC4 will be able to monitor and capture the messages to PC2;

2. PC4 sends ARP messages to advertise that the IP address of PC2 is mapped to an illegal

MAC address, which will prevent PC2 from receiving the messages to it. Particularly, if the

attacker pretends to be the gateway and do ARP cheating, the whole network will be collapsed.

ARP GUARD schematic diagram

We utilize the filtering entries of the switch to protect the ARP entries of important network

devices from being imitated by other devices. The basic theory of doing this is that utilizing the

filtering entries of the switch to check all the ARP messages entering through the port, if the

source address of the ARP message is protected, the messages will be directly dropped and

will not be forwarded.

ARP GUARD function is usually used to protect the gateway from being attacked. If all the

accessed PCs in the network should be protected from ARP cheating, then a large number of

ARP GUARD address should be configured on the port, which will take up a big part of FFP

entries in the chip, and as a result, might affect other applications. So this will be improper. It is

recommended that adopting FREE RESOURCE related accessing scheme. Please refer to

relative documents for details.

Switch

PC1

PC2

PC3

PC4

PC5

PC6

HUB

A B C D

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