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GCIH · Question #255

Maria works as a professional Ethical Hacker. She is assigned a project to test the security of that the firewall of the server is blocking the ICMP messages, but it is not checking the UDP packets…

The correct answer is B. Fraggle DoS attack. A Fraggle attack is a UDP-based amplification DoS that sends spoofed UDP echo requests to broadcast addresses, causing all hosts on the network to reply to the victim, overwhelming it with traffic.

Incident Response & Cyber Kill Chain

Question

Maria works as a professional Ethical Hacker. She is assigned a project to test the security of that the firewall of the server is blocking the ICMP messages, but it is not checking the UDP packets. Therefore, she sends a large amount of UDP echo request traffic to the IP broadcast addresses. These UDP requests have a spoofed source address of the We-are-secure server. Which of the following DoS attacks is Maria using to accomplish her task?

Options

  • APing flood attack
  • BFraggle DoS attack
  • CTeardrop attack
  • DSmurf DoS attack

How the community answered

(31 responses)
  • A
    6% (2)
  • B
    74% (23)
  • C
    13% (4)
  • D
    6% (2)

Why each option

A Fraggle attack is a UDP-based amplification DoS that sends spoofed UDP echo requests to broadcast addresses, causing all hosts on the network to reply to the victim, overwhelming it with traffic.

APing flood attack

A Ping flood sends a high volume of ICMP echo requests directly to a target, not UDP packets to broadcast addresses.

BFraggle DoS attackCorrect

The Fraggle attack is the UDP variant of the Smurf attack. It sends UDP echo requests (port 7) to IP broadcast addresses with the source address spoofed to the victim's IP. Every reachable host responds to the victim, amplifying the traffic and causing a denial of service. The question explicitly states UDP echo requests to broadcast addresses with a spoofed source, which precisely defines a Fraggle attack.

CTeardrop attack

A Teardrop attack exploits TCP/IP fragmentation by sending overlapping malformed packet fragments, causing the victim's OS to crash when reassembling them.

DSmurf DoS attack

A Smurf attack is nearly identical in concept but uses ICMP echo requests (ping) rather than UDP echo requests sent to broadcast addresses.

Concept tested: Fraggle UDP amplification DoS attack mechanism

Source: https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/understanding-denial-of-service-attacks_508c.pdf

Topics

#Fraggle attack#UDP flooding#IP spoofing#broadcast amplification

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