Again this is in theory. I'm suppose to worry about Dave, my neighbor down the street whom I borrowed hedge trimmers from last summer becoming angry and learning to program cable modems? With the DOCSIS based cable modems standard now security is as good as on DSL lines. On top of that, even the most rudimentary users know about routers now. Worrying about one of my neighbors taking time out from raising his kids, working...washing the car on the weekends or watching the game to download and learn hacking tools to reprogram his modem and spy on me is about as likely as worrying martians are watching me from their spacecraft.
http://tinyurl.com/35km7m An interesting article on cable modem security. Note part 5.0 which addresses the issue of promiscuous mode specifically. Impossible? Course not. Unlikely...in spades. Mike On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 8:16 AM, Tom Piwowar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Unfortunately, that relies on security built-in to cable modems. Some > >people have figured out how to put their cable modems into something > >called "promiscuous mode" (ethernet cards support this as well), which > >allows them to receive any packet being sent on the local wire (usually > >a neighborhood). > > Good point. I should not have missed that. The cable company's > shared-line architecture is inherently less secure because it pools > everyone's traffic on the same line. There is therefore the potential for > a neighbor to siphon off all the local traffic and inspect it. DSL and > FiOS don't pool the traffic until it is outside the local loops so > neighbors can't get to it. Of course this is the point where George Bush > siphons off the traffic to build his computerized dossier of your every > transaction. > > > ************************************************************************* > ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** > ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** > ************************************************************************* > ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
