An IP Flood attack is a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack designed to overwhelm a targeted device or network by sending an excessive number of network packets—often echo request packets, such as ICMP “ping” requests—at a rate far beyond what the target can handle. The goal is to consume all available resources (CPU, memory, bandwidth), making the system unresponsive or causing it to crash, thereby denying legitimate users access to services.
With an IP Flood attack, the attacker uses specialized code or tools to send a rapid succession of packets (often thousands per second) to the target system. Each incoming packet requires the target system to process and respond, quickly exhausting its resources. The attack continues until the system becomes unresponsive, crashes, or is otherwise unable to process legitimate traffic.