Yersinia is a free Network Penetration testing tool used to test and analyse some of the most commonly used protocols on your network. Penetration testing tools of this kind will provide deep insight on network security issues. Yersinia is a UNIX based tool that works on Linux, Solaris 8, FreeBSD.

NOTE: The tool is described as a tool to perform network tests and exercise responsible actions when performing tests which includes obtaining the permission from responsible authorities. DO NOT USE THIS TOOL FOR ANY UNAUTHROSIED HACKING PURPOSES

The attacks for testing can be performed on the following protocols:

Inter-Switch Link Protocol (ISL)

Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP)

Sending RAW CDP packet
DoS flooding CDP neighbors table
Setting up a virtual device

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

Sending RAW Configuration BPDU
Sending RAW TCN BPDU
DoS sending RAW Configuration BPDU
DoS sending RAW TCN BPDU
Claiming Root Role
Claiming Other Role
Claiming Root Role dual home (MITM)

Dynamic Trunking Protocol (DTP)

Sending RAW DTP packet
Enabling trunking

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

Sending RAW DHCP packet
DoS sending DISCOVER packet (exhausting ip pool)
Setting up rogue DHCP server
DoS sending RELEASE packet (releasing assigned ip)

Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)

Sending RAW HSRP packet
Becoming active router
Becoming active router (MITM)

IEEE 802.1Q

Sending RAW 802.1Q packet
Sending double encapsulated 802.1Q packet
Sending 802.1Q ARP Poisoning

IEEE 802.1X

Sending RAW 802.1X packet
Mitm 802.1X with 2 interfaces

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)

Sending RAW VTP packet
Deleting ALL VLANs
Deleting selected VLAN
Adding one VLAN
Catalyst crash

Yersinia has precompiled builds for Ubuntu, Debian & FreeBSD but also has the source from which we can build and install Yersinia.

To build and install from source,

Download the latest versio (0.7.1) from here

Untar, Compile, Build and install as follows

pentest# tar -zxvf yersinia-0.7.1.tar.gz

pentest# cd yersinia-0.7.1

pentest# ./configure

pentest# make

pentest# make install

For more information and some very useful writeups click here