A teardrop attack is a type of DoS attack that uses fragmented packets in an attempt to crash a target machine. The attacker sends IP packets that are deliberately malformed, such that the fragments overlap or have invalid offsets. When the target machine tries to reassemble the packets, it encounters an error or a buffer overflow, resulting in a system crash or a denial of service. Teardrop attacks exploit a vulnerability in the TCP/IP fragmentation reassembly process, which is responsible for splitting and recombining large packets that exceed the maximum transmission unit (MTU) size. Teardrop attacks can affect various operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, and BSD, depending on the implementation of the TCP/IP stack. Teardrop attacks are also known as IP fragmentation attacks or overlapping fragment attacks. References:

Implementing and Operating Cisco Security Core Technologies (SCOR) v1.0, Module 5: Securing the Cloud, Lesson 5.2: Cloud Security Threats, Topic 5.2.2: DoS Attacks

What is an IP Fragmentation Attack (Teardrop ICMP/UDP)

Teardrop Attack - Radware

What Is a Teardrop Attack? | F5