Smurf Attack

One of the most common types of attacks is the Smurf attack. In a smurf attack, the perpetrator sends an IP ping or “echo my message back to me” request to a receiving site. The ping packet specifies that it be broadcast to a number of hosts within the receiving site’s local network. The packet also indicates that the request is from another site, the target site that is to receive the denial of service. Sending a packet with someone else’s return address in it is called spoofing the return address. The result will be a lot of ping replies flooding back to the innocent, spoofed host. If the flood is great enough, the spoofed host will no longer be able to receive or distinguish real traffic.