How does a Smurf attack work?

The evil creativity of malicious people doesn’t have a limit. New malware and techniques for executing attacks appear constantly, and more people experience the unfortunate consequences. 

The Smurf attack is not new on the radar, but it keeps harming victims. Understanding how it works is the first step to design an efficient security strategy to protect your business.

What is a Smurf attack?

The Smurf attack belongs to the category of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. It was called like that due to the Smurf malware used to execute it. Its objective is to bring down computer networks, so their resources can’t be available for legit users. The vulnerability it exploits belongs to the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).

Smurf attack types

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Benefits of deploying DNSSEC.

The existence of DNSSEC itself is already a big benefit. Without it, the Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure would be absolutely vulnerable. Yes! No matter it’s the keystone for the whole Internet to work as you know it, security was not considered in its original design.

The explanation for this lack is easy. The DNS was created in the 1980s, and at that time, the Internet was considerably smaller. Then the “network of networks” grew exponentially, and the lack of authentication was clearly a problem. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) experts in charge of the protocol standards knew it and worked on a solution (the 1990s). That’s how DNSSEC Security Extensions got born.

Continue reading “Benefits of deploying DNSSEC.”