Silence on the Wire

Chapter 8. Us versus Them

What else can happen in the local perimeter of “our” network? Quite a bit!

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Local network designs, such as the Token Ring or now predominant Ethernet, were engineered under the assumption that there was no need to assure security on the level (or layer) of the technology used to transmit the data itself. When computers were first developed, users sharing a network were expected to play nice.

Although for this reason alone one might assume that the designers of Ethernet would have seen no need to incorporate full-fledged security functionality into their design, they are to be blamed for the unwarranted optimism and not foreseeing the inevitable. Ethernet simply did not leave space to easily implement integrity, confidentiality, ...