Hey gang,

Just a quick question about Cisco switches and vulnerabilites.

As many may know, if a switch is configured without a mirror port for monitoring an attacker can flood a switch to force it to enter an "all open" state where it basicly makes the switch act as a hub would and broadcast out all ports. This allows the attacker to monitor all traffic passing through the switch.

My question is this:

If this is the case and there are VLANs set up on the switch, does it also cause the VLANs to fail? Or are the VLANs preserved on their ports? Or does the switch fail, sends packets out all ports, but keps the individual VLANs intact?

Not sure if this is enough info, but I got into a debate about it with someone and want to see what you guys come up with?