The same
holds for the consultants and maintenance technicians who
occasionally tap our networks though a laptop. The network
traf?¬?c will ?¬‚ow through their network cards, too. Normally their
machines would recognize which data packets are addressed to
them and discard everything else. There is a kind of software
utility, called a sniffer, that can visualize all the river of data
?¬‚owing through a network card regardless of its destinations.
Whoever wants to play Eve will be able to effortlessly read all
nonprotected content typed by Alice.
Using a sniffer is usually against company policies, but there is
always somebody who believes he or she has very little to lose
(for example, an intern, an external worker such as a temp or a
contract employee, a disgruntled employee, or a stalker) As we
follow the data packets in their run toward the boundaries of the
company, we encounter other nodes where information could
be tapped; all the network administrators have tremendous
powers, but they are the ones with more to lose if they get
caught. When it leaves our company network, the information is
in wild territory. All the situations we described for Alice??™s company
are even more likely for Internet providers.
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