Teardrop attack

Most network technologies have a limit to the size of packets they can handle called Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU). Teardrop attacks exploits the way IP protocol splits packets, that are bigger than the systems MTU. The packets are divided into segments with each having an offset referring to the previous packet that later enables the packet to be reassembled from the segments by the receiving system. In teardrop attack, hacker sends packets with confusing offsets (for instance, the byte set as offset being in the middle of the segment) in the second or later segment to the target. If the server doesn’t know how to handle such packets it will crash.
Even though only Windows NT and Linux 2.0.30 (and below) operation systems are vulnerable to Teardrop attack, making it a pretty old method, it is still used sometimes. Even though today there are efficient ways to sort out broken and overlapped packets using firewalls, sending thousands of teardrop packets can still crash the system.

How to protect yourself against TearDrop attacks?

1. 1.The most efficient way to protect yourself is to update your operation system to the latest version, thereby making you invulnerable to tear drop attacks.
2. 2. Installing batches to make your system invulnerable to tear drop attacks.
3. 3. Firewalls can provide protection against various Denial of service attacks, however as mentioned before it won’t guarantee 100% protection from tear drop attacks.