Which network attack below would NOT be considered a Denial of
Service attack?

A.
Ping of Death

B.
SMURF

C.
TCP SYN

D.
Brute Force

Explanation:
A brute force attack is an attempt to use all combinations of key

patterns to decipher a message. The other three attacks are commonly
used to create a Denial of Service (DoS).
* Ping of Death, exploits ICMP by sending an illegal ECHO packet of >65K
octets of data, which can cause an overflow of system variables and
lead to a system crash.
* SMURF, is a type of attack using spoofed ICMP ECHO requests to broadcast addresses, which
the routers attempt to propagate, congesting the network. Three participants are required for a
SMURF attack: the attacker, the amplifying
network, and the victim.
* a TCP SYN flood attack, generates phony TCP SYN packets from random IP addresses at a
rapid rate to fill up the connection queue and stop the system from accepting legitimate users.
Source: Hacking Exposed by Stuart McClure, Joel
Scambray, and George Kurtz (Osborne, 1999).