ARPspoofing

ARP spoofing, also known as ARP poisoning, is a technique in which an attacker sends forged ARP messages on a local area network to associate their own MAC address with the IP address of another host. The Address Resolution Protocol maps IP addresses to MAC addresses on a LAN, but ARP provides no built‑in authentication, so hosts update their ARP caches based on received replies.

In an ARP spoofing attack, the attacker, typically on the same LAN segment, transmits gratuitous or forged ARP replies to targets. This causes devices to update their ARP tables so that the attacker’s MAC address is linked to the legitimate host’s IP. Subsequently, traffic intended for the real host is sent to the attacker, enabling interception, modification, or disruption of communications. The attack often enables a man‑in‑the‑middle position, but can also be used to perform denial of service by misdirecting traffic.

Impact of ARP spoofing can include eavesdropping on unencrypted data, alteration of transmitted information, session hijacking, and network outages. The vulnerability arises from the absence of authentication in ARP and the reliance on current ARP cache entries.

Mitigation and detection focus on preventing or identifying poisoned cache entries. Defenses include static ARP entries for critical devices, Dynamic ARP Inspection on switches, port security and MAC limits, and network segmentation or encryption (VPNs, TLS, IPsec). ARP monitoring tools and anomaly detection can alert administrators to suspicious ARP traffic or duplicate IP/MAC mappings. Ethical or legal use of ARP spoofing is restricted to authorized testing.