SNMP v3
Security has been the biggest weakness of SNMP since the beginning. Authentication in SNMP Versions
1 and 2 amounts to nothing more than a password (community string) sent in clear text between a
manager and agent. Any security-conscious network or system administrator knows that clear-text
passwords provide no real security at all. It is trivial for someone to intercept the community string, and
once he has it, he can use it to retrieve information from devices on your network, modify their
configuration, and even shut them down.