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ICMP Flood & Smurf Attack

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ICMP as a weapon

ICMP (the ping protocol) is designed to test network reachability. Its simplicity and ubiquity make it attractive for abuse: generating massive traffic with minimal complexity, or exploiting it for amplification attacks.

Two historical ICMP attacks shaped modern network security: the ICMP flood (volume attack), and the Smurf attack (amplification via broadcast), which was patched away by RFC 2644 in 1999.

Packets in motion — click to inspect:

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