Today I want to tell you about a type of attack that has endured over time through the PING functionality.
Running a ping isn’t only useful for network checks; it can also be used to attack other computers or servers. In fact, it is one of the oldest network attacks.
Besides the Flood attack, Ping also had another very interesting type of attack called the Ping of Death. I encourage you to look into it.
A PING flood attack is when an attacker sends a large number of ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo requests to a specific target. The goal of these PING requests is to saturate the victim’s network so that it runs very slowly or stops working altogether.
If we attack a website and consume all of its bandwidth, it won’t have the capacity to answer visitors’ requests. In the best case it will, but very slowly.
Although today it is no longer such a common attack, since there are other, more cost-effective ways of saturating a network through a DDoS.
Did you know about it? Tell me in the comments about other attacks that catch your attention.