Week 6 Reading Summary and in the news

Packet sniffing is largely an internal threat which must be mitigated.  Packet sniffing is susceptible in both a non-switched and switched network.  Many off the shelf tools today allow insider threats to easily capture information deemed sensitive.  Packet sniffers were intended for “good” use but inevitably have become a tool for malicious activity.  A switched network considered to be more secure is also vulnerable to sniffing with a laptop and implementation of a man in the middle attack.   There are a variety of mitigation steps that can be put in place that are more and less successful, but ultimately encryption is the most viable solution.

In the news: Beware of cash out attacks, banking Trojans via Malvertising and POS Memory-Scraping Malware

http://www.databreachtoday.com/malware-warning-banks-customers-atms-under-fire-a-8551