Smurf attack

As a Smurf attack is referred to a particular type of denial- of-service attack on a computer system or network.

Here, an attacker sends ping packets ( ICMP packets of type Echo Request) to the directed ( directed ) broadcast address of a network. As the sender, the address of the attacked computer is entered into these ICMP packets. In the destination network, the router forwards the broadcast request to all devices on the local network further. This has the consequence that all connected computers respond to the victims of the alleged request. Depending on the number of clients, the attacker can generate in this way with only one ICMP packet has a high number of responses to the victim. By reinforcing an attacker can focus his multiplies the available bandwidth on the victim. This is intended to connect to the Internet or the operating system of the victim are overloaded.

Forward Computer Networks, the directed broadcast requests from the Internet locally, thus supporting a Smurf attack, Smurf - Amplifier are called. The victim looks for a Smurf attack only the IP addresses of the amplifier, not the actual attacker. Nowadays, there are hardly any Smurf Amplifier, since hosts do not respond anymore in the default configuration to broadcast pings and routers do not forward packets that are addressed to a broadcast address.