Privacy concerns with DHCP (DHCP fingerprinting) (lemmy.zip)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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So many people here will go though great lengths to protect themselves from fingerprinting and snooping. However, one thing tends to get overlooked is DHCP and other layer 3 holes. When your device requests an IP it sends over a significant amount of data. DHCP fingerprinting is very similar to browser fingerprinting but unlike the browser there does not seem to be a lot of resources to defend against it. You would need to make changes to the underlying OS components to spoof it.

What are everyone's thoughts on this? Did we miss the obvious?

https://www.arubanetworks.com/vrd/AOSDHCPFPAppNote/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm#href=Chap2.html&single=true

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[-] refalo@programming.dev 3 points 4 months ago

The only thing leaked in DHCP is your MAC

This is not true. It also leaks your hostname by default and often your previously associated IP. There's also vendor-specific "DHCP option" sets that can hold extra data too, which some OSes might use to leak additional info.

[-] hostops@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago

But the reasoning stays the same.

this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024

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