IP spoofing?

[hurleyj]

i am not sure if this is the best forum to post this under, but..

what exactly is IP spoofing.. it shows someone else's IP instead of yours?

how is this done.. and could my *nix box be a threat to those types of attacks?

i am just curious on the topic..

[mindwarp]

IP spoofing is making fun of ip's.

Mindwarp

------------------
"I'm born. I'm alive. I breathe. In a moment or two I realize, that the sphere, upon which I reside, is asleep on its feet. should I go back to sleep? We orbit the sun. I grow up. my open eyes see...A zombified, somnambulist society. Leaving us as vitamins for the hibernating human animal. Do you see what I mean?"

[§ilhouette]

<---Google Search for IP Spoofing returns 83,100 hits--->

Here's one definition:

A technique used to gain unauthorized access to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a computer with an IP address indicating that the message is coming from a trusted port. To engage in IP spoofing, a hacker must first use a variety of techniques to find an IP address of a trusted port and then modify the packet headers so that it appears that the packets are coming from that port.

So, if I were a hacker and knew how to manipulate the packet headers of a datastream, and I knew what network you were running on, I could spoof packets to make it look like they were coming from *inside* your network, thereby bypassing any kind of security measures you might have.

To explain how this is done is beyond my expertise. Not only that, most modern routers know how to block this type of attack anyway, and most knowledgable Network Admins will configure their firewall scripts to deny all incoming packets that claim they are from inside the network.