Switches are vital components in any modern network. This chapter will take you through a learning experience in which we will discover how to perform layer 2 attacks on the one hand, and how to defend against them on the other hand. It is necessary to know how to secure layer 2 because network security is only as strong as your weakest layer. In our case, the weakest layer is layer 2. Compromising it could lead to compromising the other layers in the stack. In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Switching basics
- MAC attacks
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) attacks
- Virtual LAN (VLAN) attacks