What type of attack is known as the ping of death?

What type of attack is known as the ping of death?

• A. Denial of service
• B. Man-in-the-middle
• C. IP spoofing
• D. Phishing

Answer: (A)

The ping of death is a denial of service attack. It takes advantage of how ICMP echo requests (pings) are processed by a target system. By sending a ping that is larger than what the network or the host can safely reassemble, the packet can overflow buffers and crash, hang, or reboot the victim, preventing legitimate services from responding. The important point is the impact on availability—making the target unable to communicate or provide service to others. It’s not about listening in on data (that would be a man‑in‑the‑middle), forging identities (IP spoofing), or tricking users into revealing credentials (phishing). Modern systems have protections that mitigate this vector, but the concept remains a classic example of a DoS technique.

The ping of death is a denial of service attack. It takes advantage of how ICMP echo requests (pings) are processed by a target system. By sending a ping that is larger than what the network or the host can safely reassemble, the packet can overflow buffers and crash, hang, or reboot the victim, preventing legitimate services from responding. The important point is the impact on availability—making the target unable to communicate or provide service to others. It’s not about listening in on data (that would be a man‑in‑the‑middle), forging identities (IP spoofing), or tricking users into revealing credentials (phishing). Modern systems have protections that mitigate this vector, but the concept remains a classic example of a DoS technique.