Martian packet

A Martian packet is an IP packet seen on the public Internet that contains a source or destination address that is reserved for special use by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as defined in RFC 1812, Appendix B Glossary (Martian Address Filtering). On the public Internet, such a packet either has a spoofed source address, and it cannot actually originate as claimed, or the packet cannot be delivered.[1] The requirement to filter these packets (i.e. not forward them) is found in RFC 1812, Section 5.3.7 (Martian Address Filtering).

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]

In Linux terminology, a Martian packet is an IP packet received by the kernel on a specific interface, while routing tables indicate that the source IP is expected on another interface.[3][4]

The name is derived from packet from Mars, meaning that packet seems to be not of this Earth.[5]

  1. ^ a b Baker, F. (June 1995). Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers. doi:10.17487/RFC1812. RFC 1812. Retrieved 2021-08-18.
  2. ^ Baker, F.; Savola, P. (March 2004). Ingress Filtering for Multihomed Networks. doi:10.17487/RFC3704. BCP 84. RFC 3704. Retrieved 2021-08-18.
  3. ^ "Martian sources errors showing in messages log". Retrieved 2022-07-02.
  4. ^ "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 - Kernel: Martian Source Messages". Retrieved 2022-07-02.
  5. ^ "Jargon File: martian". Archived from the original on 2010-12-17. Retrieved 2010-12-25.