Hackers Beware

SNMP Community Strings

The Simple Network Management Protocol, SNMP, is a commonly used service that provides network management and monitoring capabilities. SNMP offers the capability to poll networked devices and monitor data, such as utilization and errors, for various systems on the host. SNMP is also capable of changing the configurations on the host, allowing the remote management of the network device. The protocol uses a community string for authentication from the SNMP client to the SNMP agent on the managed device. The default community string that provides the monitoring or read capability is often public. The default management or write community string is often private. The SNMP exploit takes advantage of these default community ...