What is Smurf Attack?

Smurf” Attack?
A smurf attack sends a large amount of ICMP echo (ping) traffic to a broadcast IP address with
the spoofed source address of a victim. Each secondary victim’s host on that IP network replies
to the ICMP echo request with an echo reply, multiplying the traffic by the number of hosts
responding. On a multiaccess broadcast network, hundreds of machines might reply to each
packet. This creates a magnified DoS attack of ping replies, flooding the primary victim. IRC
servers are the primary victim of smurf attacks on the Internet.