The Ping of Death (PoD) is a type of denial-of-service (DoS) cyberattack that targets computers or network devices by sending them maliciously oversized or malformed data packets, specifically using the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) “ping” function. The goal is to crash, destabilize, or freeze the targeted system.
Normally, an IP packet—including those used for pings—has a maximum allowable size of 65,535 bytes. Many legacy systems were not designed to handle packets larger than this limit. Attackers break up a maliciously large packet into smaller fragments, each within the allowed size, and send them to the target. When the target system receives these fragments, it attempts to reassemble them into a single packet. If the reassembled packet exceeds the maximum size, it can cause a buffer overflow, leading to system crashes, freezes, or reboots. While ICMP (ping) is the most common protocol used, the attack can also be carried out using other protocols like TCP, UDP, or IPX.