What Is Internet Protocol Hijacking (IP Hijacking)?

The dark and dangerous realm of IP hijacking is a significant problem on the internet. When someone takes over another person's IP address by taking control of their computer or tricking the internet into thinking their computer is the other person's, this is known as IP hijacking. Think of IP hijacking as a movie plot line in which the villain breaks into the hero's home, steals their belongings, and then claims to be the victim. IP Hijacking is the same, except that a computer and an IP address replace a house and clothes, respectively. So, how does IP hijacking work? One technique is ARP spoofing. ARP maps network IP addresses to physical addresses. A malicious actor can spoof ARP by sending bogus ARP packets to the network. This causes other computers to believe the malicious actor's computer has the IP address the bad actor wishes to hijack. Another method is called DHCP spoofing. It refers to when a malicious actor sends phosphoryl packets to a network to deceive other computers into thinking their computer is the DHCP server. This occurs when a network is compromised. Because of this, they can manage the distribution of IP addresses around the web and even take over the IP addresses of other users. Why would anyone want to take over the Internet Protocol address of another person? There are quite a few, but one of the most typical is carrying out some cyber assault. For instance, a hostile actor may use another person's IP address to carry out a DDoS assault, an abbreviation for "distributed denial of service." This would be possible if the IP address were hijacked. An example of a distributed denial-of-service attack is when a network is inundated with traffic, which makes it challenging or even impossible for users to access the network. The question now is, "How can you safeguard yourself against IP hijacking? To begin, you can use a firewall in your system. A firewall acts similarly to a doorkeeper for your computer by regulating the types of traffic permitted to enter and exit the system. Another option is to utilize a virtual private network, commonly called VPN. By encrypting your internet traffic and hiding your IP address, a virtual private network (VPN) makes it more difficult for a third party to take over your IP address and use it for their purposes.