Smurf attack
Type of denial of service attack using 'ping' commands
Smurf attacks involve sending 'ping' requests to broadcast addresses, which will deliver the request to large numbers of systems. The reply data is spoofed so that all responses are returned to a targeted (victim) system, which then receives vast quantities of data, often capable of causing a denial of service.
Such attacks were fairly common in the 1990s, but they have become fairly rare since the standards of the ICMP protocol which carries ping requests were changed to disable the broadcast response behaviour by default.
