Martin, a hacker, aimed to crash a target system. For this purpose, he spoofed the source IP address with the target’s IP address and sent many ICMP ECHO request packets to an IP broadcast network, causing all the hosts to respond to the received ICMP ECHO requests and ultimately crashing the target machine.

Martin, a hacker, aimed to crash a target system. For this purpose, he spoofed the source IP address with the target’s IP address and sent many ICMP ECHO request packets to an IP broadcast network, causing all the hosts to respond to the received ICMP ECHO requests and ultimately crashing the target machine.

Identify the type of attack performed by Martin in the above scenario.
A . UDP flood attack
B . Multi vector attack
C . Smurf attack
D . Fragmentation attack

View Answer

Answer: C

Explanation:

In the scenario described, Martin conducted a Smurf attack. This type of attack involves spoofing the source IP address with the target’s IP address and sending ICMP ECHO request packets to an IP broadcast network. The broadcast network then amplifies the traffic by directing it to all hosts, which respond to the ICMP ECHO requests. This flood of responses is sent back to the spoofed source IP address, which is the target system, leading to its overload and potential crash. The Smurf attack is a type of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that exploits the vulnerabilities of the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).

Reference: EC-Council Certified Security Specialist (E|CSS) course materials and documents