Information, Computer and Network Security Terms Glossary and Dictionary

Promiscuous Mode

Promiscuous Mode refers to a machine or software reading all packets off the network, regardless of who they are addressed to. This is used by network administrators to diagnose network problems, but also by un-authoized people who are trying to eavesdrop on network traffic (which might contain passwords and other sensitive information). A non-routing node in promiscuous mode can generally only monitor traffic to and from other nodes within the same collision domain (for Ethernet and Wireless LAN) or ring (for Token Ring or FDDI), which is why network switches are used to combat malicious use of promiscuous mode.

Related Terms

Promiscuous Mode