[katinawright]

Assuming no malfunction in any of the stations or nodes of a network, it is possible for a packet to be delivered to the wrong destination?

[retsoksirhc]

If all the NIC's work properly and nothing malfunctions, I don't believe the packet will be picked up by a network card unless the destination address it it's own. On the other hand, a type of program called a "Packet Sniffer" will allow anyone on a network where packets being sent through their cable can be picked up, even if they are not address to their network card. This happens mostly on networks with hubs (not switches). When a switch is present, it determines what port the address is on using its internal routing tables, but a hub just sends the packet out on all ports reguardless of where its destination is. If you're main point is "Are packets of data safe from interception," the answer is no. Even switches can allow packets to be "sniffed," either by cascading more switches and computers down the same line, of if there are many ARP requests sent to the switch (ARP requests are what link your network card's physical built in address to it's IP or other protocol address), it can start working like a hub and just broadcasting these packets out.

So in summary, yes packets can be picked up by network cards other than the one intended for it, but not without intent by the user of that network card.