On 03/31/2003, Helder Correia wrote: > >Bill McIntyre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >
<snipped out stuff here> >>Now and then I get a notice that I have been the subject of a "ping >>flooding" attack. As directed by my preferences, the intruder is put in a >>stop list so he can't do it again (I guess). Could someone explain what >>ping flooding is, and why I should care? > >You might want to do a search for "ping flood" for a better >description. But from what I remember, a ping flood occurs when your >computer receives a large amount of ping requests with a forged and >invalid return address. The load of both responding to the forged ping >requests and handling the bounces from the invalid address causes your >computer to slow to a crawl and possibly crash. My (semi-educated) guess would be that this is more for Windows (or poorly protected *nix) boxes, to make them available to hackers after the sytem crashes. Of course, on MacOS 9 and before (and unless you mess with it, the same applies to MacOS X), even if the hackers could get your Mac to crash, they'd have no access to your drive's contents anyway. After doing some searching, it appears the ping flood works kind of like the DOS (Denial Of Service) attacks, in that the apparent intent is also to make your system unavailable (again, likely in hopes that while you/your network's users don't realize that the sytem isn't running, the hackers might try to get to your computer's files, etc. (But again, on a Mac system as mentioned, this is very much less likely to happen than with Wintel or *nix systems). Just one more reason I very much enjoy owning Apple and Mac equipment... :-) Jim Rohde ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
