Broadcast Traffic - Security

Security

Stations that should not announce their service states should disable broadcasting. While setting the broadcast addresses to the same ip address of the station works, it's not a best practice. This will disable that station from learning of other broadcast traffic in the network. If the service in question alone provides too much information, you should consider disabling or removing it.

Some Denial of service attacks use broadcast amplification to elicit replies from a broadcast address to a spoofed victim. Routers should use ACLs or filtering to drop unwanted external to local broadcast traffic. This will prevent local stations from replying. Many Operating Systems have additional configuration to enable/disable broadcast replies.

Linux via procfs
$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts

Read more about this topic:  Broadcast Traffic

Famous quotes containing the word security:

    The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who, on grounds of decorum and morality, avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    Those words freedom and opportunity do not mean a license to climb upwards by pushing other people down. Any paternalistic system that tries to provide for security for everyone from above only calls for an impossible task and a regimentation utterly uncongenial to the spirit of our people.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    I feel a sincere wish indeed to see our government brought back to it’s republican principles, to see that kind of government firmly fixed, to which my whole life has been devoted. I hope we shall now see it so established, as that when I retire, it may be under full security that we are to continue free and happy.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)