RIPv2 security

[ohassairi]

Hi experts

i saw that we can secure ripv2 via authentication (simple and MD5)

i undertand that simple is not quite secure because we can see the plain text when capturing RIP packets

however even with MD5 i can see the authentication data (output of MD5) and i think hacker can copy it and paste it in one RIP packet that he will generate !! isn't it ?  so how much MD5 is secure ?

[Karsten Iwen · Accepted solution]

The output (the hash-value) is calculated based on the data and a key:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function

If the hacker knows the key, then he can spoof an update that will be processed by our router. So we have to make sure that only we know the key.

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