jhasensio/hping3 repository overview

⁠jhasensio/hping3:

⁠High-Performance Layer 4 Stress Tester

This repository provides a high-performance, containerized version of hping3, an advanced command-line oriented TCP/IP packet assembler and analyzer. This image is heavily optimized for Layer 4 (Transport Layer) stress testing, such as SYN floods, firewall benchmarking, and network stack limit testing.

⁠🚀 Performance Optimization (Host OS)

When generating millions of packets per second, your own host machine's firewall will likely crash before the target does. To achieve maximum throughput on modern Linux hosts (like Ubuntu 24.04), you must bypass the kernel's Connection Tracking (conntrack) engine.

Run these commands on your physical host before launching the container:

# 1. Disable conntrack globally for outgoing and incoming test traffic
sudo iptables -t raw -A OUTPUT -j NOTRACK
sudo iptables -t raw -A PREROUTING -j NOTRACK

# 2. Increase the kernel's internal packet queue limit
sudo sysctl -w net.core.netdev_max_backlog=5000

⁠🛠 Usage Example

To unleash the full speed of hping3, the Docker container must be granted raw network access and elevated file limits.

docker run -it --rm \
  --privileged \
  --net=host \
  --ulimit nofile=65535:65535 \
  --add-host target.example.local:192.168.1.52 \
  jhasensio/hping3:latest \
  -S -p 443 --flood --rand-source target.example.local

⁠🧹 Post-Test Cleanup

Once your testing is complete, it is highly recommended to restore your host machine's stateful firewall to ensure standard security.

Run this on your Linux host:

#!/bin/bash
# Flush the raw table to re-enable connection tracking
sudo iptables -t raw -F

# Restore the packet backlog to default
sudo sysctl -w net.core.netdev_max_backlog=1000

echo "✅ Connection tracking re-enabled. Security state restored." 

⁠⚠️ Disclaimer

This tool is intended for professional, authorized security testing and network benchmarking only. Using this image to conduct Denial of Service (DoS) attacks against infrastructure you do not own or do not have explicit, written permission to test is illegal and strictly prohibited.