When it comes to penetration testing and security audits, hping is one of your best friends. Currently in its third iteration, hping has become a preferred way to generate IP packets, usually for the purpose of testing firewall and intrusion detection systems.

Because you can use hping to manipulate all of the fields, flags, and protocol types of the TCP/IP protocol suite, some users call it a packet-crafting application.

By manipulating packets, you can scan systems stealthily, generate traffic floods, and generally create packets to your heart's content. Over the years, hping has become the de facto packet generator.

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