Overview

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 destination unreachable IP packets to have the receiving device busy with resolving destination IP addresses until its CPU is overloaded.

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

For more information about ARP attack features and types, see ARP Attack Protection Technology White Paper.

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