Network Security, Questions and Answers

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a) How can information be gathered from encrypted network traffic? An attacker looks for poorly configured network devices to exploit. Common vulnerabilities include weak default installation settings, wide open access controls and unpatched devices. To gather information from the encrypted network traffic attacker places the packet sniffing tool on the network. Sniffing is the act of monitoring network traffic for data such as clear-texts passwords or other configuration credentials. Usually transmitted information carried along during an Secure SHELL session cannot be seen but other information such as sender’s and receiver’s IP addresses, DNS requests to resolve hostname, port numbers and the amount of data is visible. If the traffic along the network is encrypted by the attacker, the attacker can see which sites are visited, amount of data received and sent and the port numbers used for the connection. Using a simple packet sniffer, all plaintext traffic can be read easily. This becomes possible because of weak physical security or lack of encryption during the process of sendin...

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