Guy Martin: Sniffing Cable Modems

Cable modems are widely used these days for internet connections or other applications. This talk gives a detailed overview of this mean of communication with a focus on its security. DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) is currently the most used protocol around the world for providing internet over TV coaxial cable. Due to its nature, this protocol can easily be sniffed by taping onto the TV cable using a digital TV card. By doing this, you can not only sniff your own connection but all the connections of the entire neighborhood. With my tool packet-o-matic and an inexpensive DVB-C card, countless things are possible ranging from dumping people's email into maildir to removing firewall rules and quota limitation on your connection or even a DoS of all HTTP communications by injecting TCP reset packets. Guy Martin is an active open source developer interested in all technologies that comes to his hands. After porting Gentoo Linux on the HPPA architecture five years ago, he's now primarily focused on writing a new kind of sniffer, packet-o-matic.