[GTALUG] Netgear 5-port Gigabit switch -- $10 ?

[Alvin Starr]

On 03/26/2016 11:32 PM, James Knott wrote:
> On 03/26/2016 09:58 PM, David Thornton wrote:
>> "As for security, I do a fair bit of work with Cisco gear and am a CCNA.
>> Telnet is very often used to configure them, which is plain text."
>>
>> Oh god my eyes.
>>
> I don't recommend telnet, but many people do use it.  However, it's not
> as risky as it used to be.  Back in the days of coax or hub based
> Ethernet, anyone could see all the traffic on the network.  This made it
> easy to intercept IDs and passwords.  With switches, in order to do
> that, you'd need one of those taps I mentioned earlier or management
> access to the switch.  Of course, telnet still shouldn't be used over
> the Internet.  Also, while some gear supports ssh, there is still a lot
> that's telnet only.
>

Even with SSH the first thing coming back from the switch is a set of
well defined headers and prompts so I would be willing to bet that SSH
on a switch is fairly crackable.
A lot of the lower end switches use a http web interface which is no 
more secure than telnet.

Sadly switch configuration has not changed much in the last 20+ years.
It would be interesting to see cheap Openflow switches but that
technology is still a few years away from permeating the SME market.

-- 
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