George Toft said:
John Grant wrote:
[snip]
Part of the problem with cable 'net service is that you're typically on the same LAN segment as your neighbors. Depending on your service provider, that could be quite a lot of people. It's quite easy for any of them to go a-hacking, though the smart ones will simply put their ethernet in promiscuous mode and collect passwords.
I thought that also, as my ISP was supernetting me with four class C addresses. So I ran sniffit on my firewall, looking for network traffic. There was none. I really can't believe out of 1000+ possible surfers, nobody was on line during the several times I've tried this. If the cable modem works like a switch rather than a hub, then your net traffic is safe up to the first node. Hopefully, that node is under the ISP's control, and not your neighborhood cracker.
It must vary according to the ISP. I know if you do the same thing on my friend's box you get all sorts of traffic. Even when his computer's off the activity LED on the cable "modem" still flickers. That's why I went with DSL instead. OTOH, I've been told the same sort of situation can occur with a DSL link too, though to a lesser extent. I've been told the dozen or so connections going to a common DSLAM are supposedly accessable to each other, but I haven't seen any one else's packets so far on my line. Then again, I'm not sure there IS anyone to see.. the guy who installed my line said I'm on a new segment/subnet, my IP is .2, and .1 is some sort of administrative/monitoring dingus. [more snipt] -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/