Martian packet
A Martian packet is an IP packet which specifies a source or destination address that is reserved for special-use by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and cannot actually originate as claimed or be delivered.[1]
Martian packets commonly arise from IP address spoofing in denial-of-service attacks,[2] but can also arise from network equipment malfunction or misconfiguration of a host.[1]
The name is derived from packet from Mars, a place where packets clearly can not originate.[3]
IPv4
Examples of Martian IPv4 packets are[4]:
- A packet with a source or destination IPv4 address in the ranges 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, or 192.168.0.0/16, when not participating in a private network.
- An incoming or outgoing packet whose source or destination address is in the range 127.0.0.0/8, which is reserved for loopback within the host.
- An incoming packet with a destination address of 255.255.255.255/32, which is reserved for internal broadcast.
- An incoming or outgoing packet with a Bogon source or destination address in an as-yet-unallocated range, or in the future-use range 240.0.0.0/4.[5]
IPv6
Examples of Martian IPv6 packets include any packets with the source or destination addresses belonging to the following prefixes.
- ff00::/8
- fe80::/10
- fec0::/10
- ::/96
- ::1/128
References
- ^ a b RFC 1812 - Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers
- ^ RFC 3704 - Ingress Filtering for Multihomed Networks
- ^ "Jargon File: martian". http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/martian.html.
- ^ RFC 5735 - Special Use IPv4 Addresses
- ^ "IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry". http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/.
See also