Crucial Exams

Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Practice Question

During a post-engagement briefing, a consultant is asked to clarify how passive sniffing differs from active sniffing on Ethernet networks. Which of the following statements accurately summarizes the distinction between the two techniques?

  • Passive sniffing depends on repeatedly flooding the CAM table to force a switch into a fail-open state, while active sniffing only operates on hubs and never modifies network traffic.

  • Passive sniffing silently monitors whatever traffic is already visible on the interface, whereas active sniffing injects packets (for example ARP spoofing or MAC flooding) to make a switch forward additional frames to the attacker.

  • Passive sniffing requires access to a switch mirror/SPAN port to obtain packets, whereas active sniffing merely puts the NIC in promiscuous mode on a hub-based network.

  • Passive sniffing is restricted to wireless media working in monitor mode, whereas active sniffing is used exclusively on wired Ethernet segments.

Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
Network and Perimeter Hacking
Your Score:
Settings & Objectives
Random Mixed
Questions are selected randomly from all chosen topics, with a preference for those you haven’t seen before. You may see several questions from the same objective or domain in a row.
Rotate by Objective
Questions cycle through each objective or domain in turn, helping you avoid long streaks of questions from the same area. You may see some repeat questions, but the distribution will be more balanced across topics.

Check or uncheck an objective to set which questions you will receive.

Wipe Score
Bash, the Crucial Exams Chat Bot
AI Bot