A ping flood is a simple
denial-of-service attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack 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 conne ...
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 line and the victim on a dial-up
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...
). The attacker hopes that the victim will respond with ICMP "
echo reply
ping is a computer network administration software utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. It is available for virtually all operating systems that have networking capability, including most embe ...
" 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 flood ping 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, such as Ethernet or packet radio, in a communication network. The data that these messages contain may be delivered ove ...
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.
A correctly formed ping packet is typically 56 bytes in size, or 64 bytes when the Internet Control ...
*
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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