Network Attacks and Defenses

1

Chapter 1

Switch’s CAM Table 

Poisoning Attack

1.1   Introduction

Local Area Networks (LANs) are configured to have switches

that maintain a table called the Content Addressable Memory

(CAM), which is used to map individual MAC (Media Access

Control) addresses on the network to the physical ports on

the switch. The CAM table allows the switch to direct data out

of the physical port to exactly where the recipient is located,

as opposed to indiscriminately broadcasting the data out of

all ports like a hub. The advantage of this method is that

data is bridged exclusively to the network segment contain-

ing the computer that the data is specifically des ...