“…the most recent build of Sub7 contains an undocumented feature
which can indeed be used to ping the living hell out of Web
servers, from numerous infected clients simultaneously, according
to research just completed by security outfit iDefense. …IRC bots
in the new build will listen for and respond to ping and mping
commands, iDefense Chief Scientist Sammy Migues told The
Register.”
“So, if one has managed to infect, say, a thousand victims, and
could reasonably expect perhaps 250 of them to be on line together
at any given time, one could run an mping command through all of
them simultaneously.”
“An attacker can choose a target IP; command the 250 victim
machines to send say, one million packets of 64K each; and, voila,
an instant, and distributed, ping flood.”