CompTIA Security+ Exam Prep

Answer - D - A smurf attack attempts to use a broadcast ping (ICMP) on a network.

Key Takeaway: The attacker sends a broadcast message with a legal IP address. In this case, the attacking system sends a ping request to the broadcast address of the network. The request is sent to all the machines in a large network. The reply is then sent to the machine identified with the ICMP request. The result is a DoS attack that consumes the network bandwidth of the replying system while the victim system deals with the flood of ICMP traffic it receives.