Smurfing
Smurfing is a type of DDOS attack that exploits the functionality of the ICMP and broadcast subnets configured to magnify ICMP pings that will respond.
- named after a children’s TV cartoon show
- represents the concept of an overwhelming number of very small, almost identical attacks that successfully overtake a larger opponent
- the misconfigured networks are called smurf amplifiers
- How it works:
- using the IP broadcast, attackers send packets spoofing an intended victim source IP
- echo ICMP packet is used because ping checks to see systems are alive on the network
- result of the broadcast message is all that computers on the network will respond back to the targeted system
- uncommon today
- mitigation
- ignoring external ping requests or broadcasts
Fraggle
Fraggle is a type of smurf attack that uses UDP Echo packets instead of ICMP packets.