What is a Smurf Attack? How to protect ourselves against it?

A Smurf Attack aims at making your device inoperable by flooding it with numerous ping messages. It belongs to the category of DDoS attacks that exploit the security voids in the ICMP and IP creating high network traffic.

Important Terms

• IP: Internet Protocol
• ICMP: Internet Control Message Protocol

Attacking Methodology of Smurf Attack. 

Here’s how a Smurf Attack infects your device. 

1. To attack users, Smurf uses a false IP address to send network packets to the victim’s device. This process is known as Spoofing.
2. The packets are embedded with ICMP ping messages asking the receiving network to send a response.
3. The replies are then sent again and again to flood your device and create an infinite loop. 
4. In addition to the above-mentioned steps, Smurf attack combines itself with the IP broadcasting to create a full-fledged DOS attack.

How Does it Get Transmitted To Your Device? 

Here are a few transmission ways through which this deadly malware can infect your device. 

• It can infect your device through an infected and unverified website. Email attachments and links can also be used to exploit targeted devices.
• Once it gets a place in your device it remains dormant until the user activates it. 
• The virus can also use rootkits to create a backdoor for hackers providing them unauthorized access to your device.
• If Smurf attacks succeed in creating a DDoS attack, it can paralyze the entire network spectrum of your home PCs and enterprise-level setups.

How to Protect Yourself Against Smurf Attack? 

Here are a few simple steps that can help you avoid being a victim of Smurf Attacks. Right security etiquettes are what you need to safeguard yourself against Smurf Attack.

• Be highly vigilant while performing online activities. Try to detect any unusual and unidentified activities and a sudden increase in your network traffic.
• You can also disable your IP broadcasting for this.
• In addition to this use a powerful and reliable tool to combat the impact of the attack.
• You should also configure your network routers and host devices, to not send response messages to the ICMP pings.
• Apart from this also reconfigure your operating system, by properly blocking all the broadcast traffic coming into your network.
• Reconfigure your firewall software to block any ICMP pings coming from outside your network.