Packet Creation Idea, Is this possible?

Hiya,

Ive been toying with an idea that I dunno whether it came from anywhere or its just something my messed up head thought of but is it possible to create a packet that at each hop in a traceroute effectivly sheds a layer of skin so that it changes its location or destination port address?

so basically it might start of as a packet to 10.0.0.1 on port 80, once its there is realise its got to its destination and then goes on to say 10.0.0.2 on port 23, hope thats sort of clearish...

Im pretty sure that it wont work as your only using packets, so the packet with in the packet will only appear as data and nothing will be done with it..

can anyone verify wether this is possible or complete fantasy? If its not is there a name for it?

thanks

i2c

Not possible.....

It would require the packet to have some form of self-awareness and be thinking as it moved, (executing code).

Packets are just that, lumps of inert data that are acted upon by network devices. It would take the intervention of an external entity, (PC, router or whatever), to change the packets form and thus it's destination/port etc.

Quote:

---

Packets are just that, lumps of inert data that are acted upon by network devices.

---

Exactly. Packet's aren't AI and they couldn't change their destination port in the middle of a hop.

Cheers dudes for confirming that, I dunno where i thought of that idea, I had some idea of an onion im my head....dunno why, I blame it on eatting cheese before I go to sleep.

If it were imagine the possibilitys, there pretty grim really, you could effectivly tunnel your way into most networks I would image.

Anyway cheers once again

i2c

you can create packets bit-by-bit i have a program that creates them, but i dont have it with me or even the name cuz im travelling. Maybe a exploit in a sniffer or honeypot porogram or somethingcould allow you to execute packets. Maybe a packet could be designed to just exploit a security sstem, then go into the system, create a NEW packet that would have a different IP etc. It would be difficult but similar to your idea.

there are a couple of theoretical approaches at a network level, but neither of them are going to yield any form of success in practice. you could do this via multilayered tunneling (which has always been a problem - i don't know of anyone who's implemented it with 100% success). however, each hop would be indifferent/inactive to the action - they would simply be a virtual gateway to the next hop. so in effect you would only be tracerouting the end target via a series of encapsulated gateways.

the other route would be through source routing options - which would allow you to specify a next-hop address - but the port/transport(less) information would remain static.

to do either would require that functionality exist and be available to you at each router/hop in use. and you'd be lucky to find any public router that supports source routing, period. but there are a number of routers that support gre by default. however they are likely to be bound from within a protocol that is configured to require some form of authentication (and optional encryption)...ie, pptp. and even then i'd say that the ability to tunnel within a tunnel (which is generally considered impossible based on lack of implementation - although completely feasible on paper) would be significantly limited.

the only other option i see would exist at a service/application level, whereby you are simply chaining proxies. essentially the same as the above, but implemented at a completely different layer, and generally specificly designed for a particular application layer protocol.

...but that's why they play the game. give it a shot, see where you get with it. record your findings and get back to us with an update.

i2c

It's fun to toy with different ideas and thoughts like that and hey, who knows some day you might figure out some way to impliment a molting packet. But for right now, one constrain that wasn't mentioned was packet size. It would be like trying to push an orange through a garden hose. Although you might be able to do it if you reduced the size of the orange down to smaller pieces you would have to reconstruct it perfectly at each stop. Then break it down again etc. But as was mentioned earlier, it would have to be "aware".

:)

"It would be like trying to push an orange through a garden hose. " sounds like childbirth! Couldnt you have drone machines morph packets with certain specs, bieng the morphing packet? They could change the IP and everything. What do you think of that? I think its a possibility right now as a threat, a bounce through 3 or 4 servers with that would be a real threat to security.