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CF app network corruption

Corrupt a configurable percentage of egress packets from a Cloud Foundry app instance so you can test how TCP retransmissions and protocol handlers cope.

CF app network corruption is a Cloud Foundry chaos fault that corrupts packetCorruptionPercentage percent of egress packets from one or more instances of app. You can restrict the corruption to specific destination hosts, IP ranges, source ports, or destination ports. The fault lasts for duration seconds.

Use this fault to validate TCP-level resilience, protocol parsers, and application retry budgets in conditions that look like a flaky NIC or a flapping fiber. Corrupted packets are typically discarded by the receiver's stack, triggering retransmissions and longer round-trip times.

RUN YOUR FIRST EXPERIMENT

If you have not configured the chaos infrastructure yet, go to Quickstart to install the Linux chaos infrastructure and run an experiment end to end.

Use cases

  • Retransmission overhead: Quantify how TCP retransmissions due to corruption affect end-to-end latency.

  • Parser robustness: Test that protocol parsers reject malformed frames cleanly rather than crashing.

  • Retry budgets: Confirm application retries do not amplify the slowdown.

  • Network monitoring: Validate that L4 monitoring detects elevated retransmission rates and alerts within SLA.

Before you begin

  • Chaos infrastructure: A Linux chaos infrastructure (LCI) installed in one of the supported deployment models.

  • CF and BOSH credentials: The LCI host has CF_*, UAA_SERVER_ENDPOINT, and BOSH_* credentials configured.

  • Target identifiers: You know the organization, space, app, and the boshDeployment.

  • Network interface: You know the interface name inside the container (typically eth0).

  • Destinations: You know the host(s), IP range(s), or port(s) to affect. Leave blank to affect all egress.

Supported environments

Platform
Support status

Cloud Foundry (TAS, PCF, open-source) running on BOSH-managed Diego cells

Supported

Permissions required

Action
Requirement

List apps the CF user can access

SpaceDeveloper, SpaceAuditor, OrgManager, or OrgAuditor; scopes cloud_controller.read or cloud_controller.admin

List BOSH deployments

BOSH user with bosh.read scope

SSH to a Diego cell via BOSH

BOSH UAA token with bosh.ssh or bosh.admin scope

Apply traffic-shaping rules inside the target container's namespace

Operator with sudo or root on the cell host

Authentication

Layer
Where to provide
Tunables

Cloud Foundry API + BOSH director

/etc/linux-chaos-infrastructure/cf.env on the LCI host

CF_API_ENDPOINT, CF_USERNAME, CF_PASSWORD, UAA_SERVER_ENDPOINT, BOSH_CLIENT, BOSH_CLIENT_SECRET, BOSH_CA_CERT, BOSH_ENVIRONMENT

vSphere (only when faultInjectorLocation: vSphere)

/etc/linux-chaos-infrastructure/vsphere.env

GOVC_URL, GOVC_USERNAME, GOVC_PASSWORD, GOVC_INSECURE, VM_NAME, VM_USERNAME, VM_PASSWORD

Fault tunables

Required parameters

Tunable
Description
Default

deploymentModel

LCI placement model. One of model-1 or model-2.

(required)

organization

CF organization that owns the app.

(required)

space

CF space within the organization.

(required)

app

App whose egress traffic is corrupted.

(required)

Chaos parameters

Tunable
Description
Default

packetCorruptionPercentage

Percentage of egress packets to corrupt (0-100).

100

networkInterface

Network interface inside the container.

eth0

destinationHosts

Comma-separated list of hostnames to affect. Leave empty to affect all egress.

""

destinationIPs

Comma-separated list of destination IPs or CIDRs to affect.

""

sourcePorts

Comma-separated list of source ports to affect.

""

destinationPorts

Comma-separated list of destination ports to affect.

""

instanceAffectedPercentage

Percentage of instances to target. 0 targets exactly one.

0

boshDeployment

BOSH deployment name. Required for deploymentModel: model-2.

""

faultInjectorLocation

local or vSphere. Required for deploymentModel: model-2.

local

faultInjectorPort

Local port used by the fault-injector.

50320

duration

Total chaos duration.

30s

skipSSLValidation

Skip SSL validation when calling CF APIs.

false

rampTime

Wait period in seconds before and after the fault.

0

Tunables that apply to every fault are documented in common tunables for all faults.

Fault execution in brief

Authenticates to Cloud Foundry and BOSH, locates the target app instance(s), and installs a traffic-shaping rule on networkInterface inside the container's network namespace that corrupts packetCorruptionPercentage% of packets matching the configured destinations/ports. The rule is removed when duration elapses.

Expected behavior during fault execution

  • Corrupted packets are discarded by the receiver's TCP stack, triggering retransmissions.

  • Effective throughput drops; round-trip time rises.

  • Application-level error rate may rise if retries exhaust the configured budget.

  • After the fault ends, network behavior returns to baseline.

Signals to watch

  • Caller latency and error rate: Use an HTTP probe on the app or its dependency.

  • TCP retransmissions: Inspect host-level network metrics on the cell hosting the affected instance.

Recovery and cleanup

  • The traffic-shaping rule is removed at the end of duration.

Limitations

  • Operates on the egress side only.

  • Corruption is applied to the payload bytes; the receiver's checksum check rejects the packet. Protocols without a checksum (rare) may not detect the corruption.

Troubleshooting

CF app network corruption: no observable effect in Harness Chaos Engineering

Confirm networkInterface matches the interface inside the container. Confirm destination filters match traffic that is actually flowing. Inspect TCP retransmission counters on the cell to verify the rule is active.

Common configurations

Corrupt traffic to one downstream

The following Cloud Foundry secrets reside on the same machine where the chaos infrastructure is executed. These secrets are provided in the /etc/linux-chaos-infrastructure/cf.env file in the following format:

If the secrets file is not provided, the secrets are attempted to be derived from environment variables and the config file by the fault-injector.

ENV name
Description
Example

CF_API_ENDPOINT

API endpoint for the CF setup

https://api.system.cf-setup.com

CF_USERNAME

Username for the CF user

username

CF_PASSWORD

Password for the CF user

password

UAA_SERVER_ENDPOINT

API endpoint for the UAA server for the CF setup

https://uaa.system.cf-setup.com

BOSH_CLIENT

Used by the bosh CLI, the BOSH client

admin

BOSH_CLIENT_SECRET

Used by the bosh CLI, the BOSH client secret

UBu9Fu3oW35sO6fw12auPH76gsRTy7

BOSH_CA_CERT

Used by the bosh CLI, the file path for BOSH CA certificate

/root/root_ca_certificate

BOSH_ENVIRONMENT

Used by the bosh CLI, the BOSH environment

bosh.corp.local

Fault injector ENVs and config file

If /etc/linux-chaos-infrastructure/cf.env file is not provided, fault-injector attempts to derive the secrets from environment variables or a configuration file. Any secret that is re-declared will be overridden in the following order of decreasing precedence:

  1. /etc/linux-chaos-infrastructure/cf.env file

  2. Environment variables

  3. Configuration file

The configuration file should be provided at /etc/linux-chaos-infrastructure/cf-fault-injector.yaml:

A mapping between all the three formats for providing the secrets is as follows:

cf.env
ENV
cf-fault-injector.yaml

CF_API_ENDPOINT

CF_API_ENDPOINT

cf-api-endpoint

CF_USERNAME

USERNAME

username

CF_PASSWORD

PASSWORD

password

UAA_SERVER_ENDPOINT

UAA_SERVER_ENDPOINT

uaa-server-endpoint

BOSH_CLIENT

BOSH_CLIENT

bosh-client

BOSH_CLIENT_SECRET

BOSH_CLIENT_SECRET

bosh-client-secret

BOSH_CA_CERT

BOSH_CA_CERT

bosh-ca-cert

BOSH_ENVIRONMENT

BOSH_ENVIRONMENT

bosh-environment

These secrets are provided only if vSphere is used as the deployment platform for CF.

The following vSphere secrets reside on the same machine where the chaos infrastructure is executed. These secrets are provided in the /etc/linux-chaos-infrastructure/vsphere.env file in the following format:

ENV Name
Description
Notes

GOVC_URL

Endpoint for vSphere

For example, 192.168.214.244

GOVC_USERNAME

Username for the vSphere user

For example, username

GOVC_PASSWORD

Password for the vSphere user

For example, password

GOVC_INSECURE

Skip SSL validation for govc commands

For example, true

VM_NAME

Name of the vSphere VM where the fault-injector utility is installed

For example, cf-vm

VM_USERNAME

Username for the VM guest user

For example, root

VM_PASSWORD

Password for the VM guest user

For example, password

Related faults

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