TCP/IP spoofing fundamentals
Nelson Hastings, P.A. McLean · 2002
On January 22, 1995, in an article entitled, "New form of attack on computers linked to Internet is uncovered", John Markoff of the New York Times reported on the TCP/IP protocol suite's security weakness known as IP spoofing. The IP spoofing security weakness was published by S. M. Bellovin (1989). However, not much attention has been paid to the security weaknesses of the TCP/IP protocol by the general public. This is changing as more people and companies are connecting to the Internet to conduct business. This paper will explore the fundamental weaknesses of the TCP/IP protocol suite used in IP spoofing. A demonstration of exploiting the weaknesses to create unauthorized connections to a network host system is presented by reviewing the software tools developed. This is used to execute an IP spoofing attack. Finally, the paper discusses ways to defend against the IP spoofing attack and their effectiveness.