What risk is associated with a ping flood attack?

A ping flood attack is a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack where an attacker sends a large number of ICMP Echo Request packets, commonly known as pings, to a target in an attempt to overwhelm the network resources or the specific service running on a host. The objective of this attack is to disrupt the normal operation of a network by flooding it with traffic, causing legitimate requests to be delayed or denied.

By sending these excessive requests, the attacker can monopolize the bandwidth of the network, leading to severe performance degradation. In some cases, this can cause the target server to become unresponsive, making it impossible for legitimate users to access services or data.

This type of attack does not involve data corruption, lockout scenarios requiring ransom, or typically unauthorized data access. Instead, its primary focus is on disrupting service availability, making overwhelming a network service the most accurate description of the associated risk.