What is a potential risk when using stateless packet filtering firewalls?

Stateless packet filtering firewalls operate by examining packets independently, without considering the state of active connections. This characteristic makes them fundamentally different from stateful firewalls, which track the state of active connections and make decisions based on the context of a connected session.

A significant risk associated with stateless packet filtering is their susceptibility to spoofing attacks. Since they do not maintain context about connections, they can be tricked by malicious packets that mimic valid traffic. An attacker can forge packets to appear as if they are coming from a trusted source, and the stateless firewall may allow these packets to pass through without further scrutiny. In contrast, stateful firewalls would analyze the packet's context and recognize that it doesn't fit with an established session, blocking it accordingly.

By not having the ability to evaluate the state of traffic flow, stateless firewalls are less effective at preventing certain types of attacks such as IP spoofing. Therefore, while they are generally faster and require less processing since they do not analyze the entire packet data stream, their lack of connection context makes them more vulnerable to being bypassed by attackers.