Spoofing one’s IP address
It never fails that someone asks how they can spoof their IP address as they want to make sure they are totally anonymous on the Internet. Well fallacy number one is that you have any privacy at all on the Internet, and secondly that spoofing a TCP/IP connection is really rather limited in scope. Basic TCP/IP principles dictate that to complete the three way TCP/IP handshake then the orginator of the connection must be there to receive the returning stimulus ie: SYN/ACK. If you are spoofing someone’s IP address then guess who is going to get the SYN/ACK? It will be them, and not you. I also had the same vision of what IP spoofing was all about until I stopped wasting my time with such idea’s and started studying networking principles.
zerobane Says:
May 5th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Think that spoofing is actaully a slang term now for routing through proxy’s and vpn’s.
The actaul art of spoofing is more like hijacking, also you never get replies, since the destination ip and your ip are down two completly different paths. Making it rather useless unless your farming a massive ddos, smurfing or some other script kiddie crime.
Programs like privoxy and tor, combined with firefox and foxyproxy make a easy way to “onion” your connection. At least fooling the adverts and clickstream trackers. Although if you do something “questionable” someone motivated enoungh could eventaully find you.
The only true anonymous surfing is to go hijack your poor nieghbors unecrypted wi-fi connection.
Don Parker Says:
May 5th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Hi zerobane,
I agree with your comment. A lot of people have rather strange notions as to what IP spoofing is, and what it can do. Session hijacking is another concept that people rarely understand.