Packet Loss Attack
The Packet Loss Gremlin randomly injects a percentage of packet loss (or packet corruption) into IP packets at the transport layer, targeted by supplied port and host arguments.
Linux
The Packet Loss Gremlin uses existing Quality of Service (QOS) and Differentiated Services (diffserv) facilities in the Linux kernel to emulate natural packet loss (and optionally packet corruption).
This Gremlin does not interact with <span class="code-class-custom">iptables</span>, and so it does not interfere with any existing <span class="code-class-custom">iptables</span> rulesets.
This Gremlin requires the <span class="code-class-custom">NET_ADMIN</span> capability, which is enabled for Gremlin by default at installation time. See capabilities(7)
Options
| Parameter | Flag | Required | Default | Version | Description |
|---|
| IP Addresses | -i IP address | False | | 0.0.1 | Only impact traffic to these IP addresses. Also accepts CIDR values (i.e. 10.0.0.0/24). |
| Device | -d interfaces | False | Device discovery | 0.0.1 | Impact traffic over these network interfaces. Comma separated lists and multiple arguments supported. You can define multiple interfaces starting with agent version 2.30.0. |
| Hostnames | -h hostnames | False | ^api.gremlin.com | 0.0.1 | Only impact traffic to these hostnames. |
| Remote Ports | -p port numbers | False | ^53 | 0.0.1 | Only impact outgoing traffic to these destination ports. Also accepts port ranges (e.g. 8080-8085). |
| Local Ports | -s port numbers | False | | 0.0.1 | Only impact outgoing traffic from these source ports. Also accepts port ranges (e.g. 8080-8085). |
| Percent | -r <0-100> | False | 1 | 0.0.1 | Percentage of packets to drop (10 is 10%). |
| Protocol | -P {TCP, UDP, ICMP} | False | all | 1.5.3 | Only impact a specific protocol. |
| Corrupt | -c | False | False | 0.0.1 | Corrupt the packets instead of just dropping them. |
| Providers | WebUI and API Only | False | | 0.0.1 | External service providers to affect. |
| Tags | WebUI and API Only | False | | 0.0.1 | Only impact traffic to hosts running Gremlin clients associated with these tags. |
| Length | -l int | False | 60 | 0.0.1 | The length of the experiment (seconds). |
