Protect the ARP cache?

[netbuster91]

I recently installed COMODO personal firewall and it has the options to 'protect the ARP cache' and 'black gratuitious ARP frames' It would be great if someone could explain these options to me.

I have read some articles about ARP poisoning (i think,) I wondered if someone could shed some light on the technical points behind this.

Kind regards,
netbuster

 

[jet042]

The ARP cache keeps track of the MAC addresses of computers you communicate with and what IP address they tie too. On a PC, the only entries that are likely to be there are ones for your gateway and any network printers you have.

What an ARP poisoning attack is usually looking to do is make your computer think a different machine is your gateway than the router you set up. That way, all your traffic (e-mail, banking sites, etc) goes through it before being passed out to the internet. It allows someone to set up a "man-in-the-middle" attack much more simply and to sniff all the information going in and out from your network.

 

[netbuster91]

Thanks for the information, that makes a lot of sense.