Spoofed ARP packets detection in switched LAN networks

Abstract

Spoofed ARP packets are used by malicious users to redirect network’s traffic to their hosts. The potential damage to a network from an attack of this nature can be very important. This paper discusses first how malicious users redirect network traffic using spoofed ARP packets. Then, the paper proposes a practical and efficient mechanism for detecting malicious hosts that are performing traffic redirection attack against other hosts in switched LAN networks. The proposed mechanism consists of sending first spoofed packets to the network’s hosts. Then, by collecting and analyzing the responses packets, it is shown how hosts performing traffic redirection attack can be identified efficiently and accurately. The affect of the proposed mechanism on the performance of the network is discussed and shown to be minimal. The limits of current IDSs regarding their ability to detect malicious traffic redirection attack, based on spoofed ARP packets, in switched LAN networks are discussed. Our work is concerned with the detection of malicious network traffic redirection attack, at the Data Link layer. Other works proposed protection mechanisms against this attack, but at the Application layer, using cryptographic techniques and protocols.