A ping flood is a simple
denial-of-service attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host co ...
where the attacker overwhelms the victim with
ICMP "echo request" (
ping)
packets. This is most effective by using the flood option of ping which sends ICMP packets as fast as possible without waiting for replies. Most implementations of ping require the user to be
privileged in order to specify the flood option. It is most successful if the attacker has more
bandwidth
Bandwidth commonly refers to:
* Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range
* Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
than the victim (for instance an attacker with a
DSL
Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...
line and the victim on a dial-up
modem
The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...
). The attacker hopes that the victim will respond with ICMP "
echo reply" packets, thus consuming both outgoing bandwidth as well as incoming bandwidth. If the target system is slow enough, it is possible to consume enough of its CPU cycles for a user to notice a significant slowdown.
A ping flood can also be used as a diagnostic for network
packet loss
Packet loss occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is either caused by errors in data transmission, typically across wireless networks, or network congestion.Ku ...
and
throughput
Network throughput (or just throughput, when in context) refers to the rate of message delivery over a communication channel in a communication network, such as Ethernet or packet radio. The data that these messages contain may be delivered ov ...
issues.
See also
*
INVITE of Death
*
Ping of death
A ping of death is a type of attack on a computer system that involves sending a malformed or otherwise malicious ping to a computer. In this attack, a host sends hundreds of ping requests with a packet size that is large or illegal to another ho ...
*
Smurf attack
A Smurf attack is a distributed denial-of-service attack in which large numbers of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets with the intended victim's spoofed source IP are broadcast to a computer network using an IP broadcast address. ...
, including fraggle attack
*
Twinge attack
References
External links
"TBTF for 8/4/97: A morbid taste for fiber" by Keith Dawson
Denial-of-service attacks
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