Starvation Attack

Mechanism

As shown in Figure 1, attackers apply to a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server for IP addresses by sending a large number of DHCP packets with varied media access control (MAC) addresses in frame headers. As a result, IP addresses in the address pool are exhausted, and authorized clients cannot obtain IP addresses.

Figure 1 Starvation attack

Solution

This attack can be prevented by limiting the number of MAC addresses that an interface can learn.

Parent Topic: Understanding DHCP Snooping

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