CEH Practice Question: Malware, Social Engineering and Network Attacks
During a penetration test, you execute a command that sends a large number of spoofed ICMP echo request packets to a subnet's broadcast address. This results in a flood of replies to the target system. Which attack have you performed?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Smurf attack with a standard ICMP flood. The critical distinction is that a Smurf attack uses a subnet broadcast address and spoofs the victim's IP, causing all hosts in the subnet to reply to the victim, amplifying traffic. A simple ICMP flood sends many pings directly to the target without amplification. In CEH, this amplification and spoofing is the key to recognizing the Smurf attack.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Smurf attack
The Smurf attack works by sending a large number of ICMP echo request packets with a spoofed source IP (the victim's address) to a subnet's broadcast address. All hosts on that subnet receive the request and reply to the spoofed source, overwhelming the victim with ICMP echo replies. This amplifies traffic because a single request triggers many responses, making it a classic amplification DDoS attack.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Ping of Death
Why it's wrong here
Ping of Death sends a single oversized ICMP packet (over 65,535 bytes) to crash a target through buffer overflow, not spoofed requests to a broadcast address. It is tempting because both involve malformed ICMP, but it targets one host's IP stack rather than amplifying replies across a subnet.
- ✓
Smurf attack
Why this is correct
A Smurf attack exploits ICMP by sending spoofed echo requests to a subnet's broadcast address, causing every host to reply to the victim. This matches the stem's constraint exactly: the spoofed source is the target, and the amplified replies flood it, achieving traffic amplification through broadcast reflection.
- ✗
UDP flood
Why it's wrong here
A UDP flood sends spoofed UDP datagrams to random ports on a victim, forcing ICMP port-unreachable replies; no broadcast address or echo requests are involved. It is tempting as another amplification-style volumetric attack, but the scenario's ICMP echo requests to a subnet broadcast address identify Smurf instead.
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ICMP flood
Why it's wrong here
An ICMP flood sends spoofed echo requests directly to a single victim's unicast address, exhausting its bandwidth with replies. The scenario's broadcast-address destination, which multiplies replies from every live host, is the Smurf attack's defining mechanism. ICMP flood would fit a direct volumetric assault on one target.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CEH practice question is part of Courseiva's free EC-Council certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CEH exam.