smurf

A DoS attack in which there are three parties: the attacker, the victim, and the intermediary. The victim is usually one entity on the internet. The intermediary is a network of some kind. Basically, the attacker forges the packet headers of ICMP request packets so they look like they're coming from the victim. He directs the packets at the intermediary (network). Every machine on the network must reply to the request, so they all reply, but their replies are directed to the victim. That causes the victim, and the intermediary usually, to suffer network congestion, etc. etc. etc. That's a basic definition, but oh well.