A type of
denial of service attack that
exploits the way that the
Internet Protocol requires a
packet that is too large for the next
router to handle to be divided into fragments. The fragment
packet identifies an
offset to the beginning of the first
packet that enables the entire
packet to be reassembled by the receiving
system. In the teardrop attack, the attacker's
IP puts a confusing
offset value in the second or later fragment. If the receiving
operating system does not have a plan for this situation, it can cause the
system to
crash.
See also: buffer overflow attack, SYN attack, smurf attack, physical infrastructure attack