Free Internet Security

IP spoofing or Internet protocol address spoofing is the method of creating an Internet protocol packet or IP packet using a fake IP address that is impersonating a legal and legitimate IP address.

The main purpose of IP spoofing is to conceal your original identity while communicating with a server or another computer.

Spoofed IP is a fake IP address that does not belong to any computer in the network currently. IP spoofing exploits the stateless communication of IP protocol.

IP spoofing is done by modifying the contents in the header section of an IP packet. The header of an IP packet contains the source address and the destination address of the packet.

To accomplish IP Spoofing the numerical value of source address is modified. Similarly a packet intended for a specific IP address can be redirected to another node or server by simply modifying the destination address as there is no mechanism in IP protocol to verify the proper delivery of a packet to destination.

Spoofed IP packets will never reveal the actual identity of the sender, due to this IP spoofing is primarily used for make denial of service also known as DoS attacks, cyber crime, hacking and phishing. Hackers normally use IP spoofing to contravene network security and gain access to a protected network.

By using IP spoofing an attacker can impersonate a computer that is inside the network, by doing so he can use the services a network is providing without giving the username and password that a network requires.

There are different kinds of IP spoofing like:
•    Non Blind spoofing
•    Blind spoofing
•    Man in the Middle Attack