Configuring ARP attack protection

ARP attacks and viruses are threatening LAN security. This chapter describes multiple features used to detect and prevent ARP attacks.

Although ARP is easy to implement, it provides no security mechanism and is vulnerable to network attacks. An attacker can exploit ARP vulnerabilities to attack network devices in the following ways:

• Acts as a trusted user or gateway to send ARP packets so the receiving devices obtain incorrect ARP entries.

• Sends a large number of unresolvable IP packets to have the receiving device busy with resolving IP addresses until its CPU is overloaded. Unresolvable IP packets refer to IP packets for which ARP cannot find corresponding MAC addresses.

• Sends a large number of ARP packets to overload the CPU of the receiving device.