In
computer networking
A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
, a mangled or invalid packet is a
packet—especially
IP packet—that either lacks order or self-coherence, or contains code aimed to confuse or disrupt
computer
A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
s,
firewalls,
routers, or any service present on the network.
Their usage is associated with a type of network attack called a
denial-of-service (DoS) attack. They aim to destabilize the network and sometimes to reveal its available services—when network operators must restart the disabled ones.
Mangled packets can be generated by dedicated software such as
nmap.
, most invalid packets are easily filtered by modern
stateful firewall
In computing, a stateful firewall is a network-based firewall that individually tracks sessions of network connections traversing it. Stateful packet inspection, also referred to as dynamic packet filtering, is a security feature often used in n ...
s.
References
Packets (information technology)
{{Compu-network-stub