MAC flooding

A cyber attack aimed at compromising data transmitted to a device that is connected to a network switch. The method is based on overflowing the MAC address table for devices and their corresponding network segments. This database is necessary for more accurate routing of packets, allowing selective broadcasting to clients on the switch.

An attacker can send a large number of frames containing fake network identifiers to the switch, and flood the entire MAC address table with them. In this case, a legitimate client’s request is relayed to all segments of the network, and can be intercepted by an attacker.