hping3 is a tool for sending arbitrary packets to network hosts. It's similar to the ping command, but works specifically for TCP/IP packets. Given that this tool uses TCP/IP rather than ICMP packets it can be used for much more than ping.

hping3 -c 3 <IPAddress>

• This will send 3 TCP/IP packets to the IP address you target. You'll get a response similar to the ping command showing the number of packets sent and the replies received.

hping3 --scan 1-500 -S <myIPAddress>

• --scan - Specifies the range of ports to scan.
• -S - Performs a SYN scan.
• This scan will show the open ports on the target along with some information about the open ports.

hping3 <myIPAddress> --udp --rand-source --data 1000

• This will send UDP packets to the target from a 'random' source. This could be used to flood a network with packets.
• --data 1000 - This specifies the size of the packet you'd like to send.

hping3 -S <myIPAddress> -p 80 -c 10

• This sends 10 SYN packets to port 80.

hping3 <myIPAddress> --flood

• This will flood the target with packets as fast as possible. This mode does not show replies by default.

Denial of Service

As well as scanning hping3 can be used to perform denial of service (DOS) attacks. This is very easy to do with the following command.

hping3 -S <targetIP> -a <hostIP> -p22 --flood

• -S - Sets the SYN flag in the packets.
• -a - Allows you to set the IP address of the source, this allows you to spoof the source address.
• -p - Sets the port.
• --flood - Tells hping3 to flood the target with packets.