smurf attack
termsecuritynetworking
The classic amplification DDoS: ICMP echo requests sent to a broadcast address with the victim forged as the source.
Every host on the abused network answers the ping, so one spoofed packet returns a crowd of replies to the victim; the name comes from smurf.c, the 1997 exploit tool. The defense reshaped defaults: routers stopped forwarding directed broadcasts (codified in RFC 2644) and networks learned to filter spoofed sources. Smurf is the ancestor every modern reflection attack, from DNS to NTP amplification, is measured against.