In the past few days since I have put my Load Balancer Broadband Router into my home network, I have been watching the log files and noticed a considerable amount of warnings about a "Ping of Death attack". The good thing is it appears that my router drops these packages when they are detected. So I guess that's a good thing.
In computer terms, a "ping" is a network utility used to test a network connection. It works much like a sonar – a "pulse" is sent out, and the "echo" from that pulse tells the operator information about the environment. If the connection is working, the source machine receives a reply from the targeted machine.
A Ping of Death attack is a denial-of-service attack in which the attacker aims to disrupt a targeted machine by sending a packet larger than the maximum allowable size. When a maliciously large packet is transmitted from the attacker to the target, the packet becomes fragmented into segments, each smaller than the maximum size limit. When the target machine attempts to put the pieces back together, the total exceeds the size limit, causing the target machine to freeze, crash or reboot.
So, it appears my new router is recognising this threat and taking the appropriate action. I have no idea how my home network might have managed this threat in the past, but it is nice to know I have a defence in place.