Explain a smurf attack

Answer 1

A smurf attack involves three parties: the perpetrator, the intermediary, and the victim. It is accomplished by exploiting an internet maintenance tool called a ping, which is used to test the state of network congestion and determine whether a particular host computer is connected and available on the network.

The perpetrator of a smurf attack uses a program to create a ping message packet that contains the forged IP address of the victim's computer (IP spoofing) rather than that of the actual source computer. The ping message is then sent to the intermediary, which is actually an entire sub network of computers. By sending the ping to the network's IP broadcast address, the perpetrator ensures that each node on the intermediary network receives the echo request automatically. Consequently, each intermediary node sends echo responses to the ping message, which are returned to the victim's IP address not the source computer's. The resulting flood of echoes can overwhelm the victim's computer and cause network congestion that makes it unusable for legitimate traffic.