Information, Computer and Network Security Terms Glossary and Dictionary

Bonk attack

Bonk attack , a variant of the teardrop attack, is a type of denial of service(DoS) attack. The Bonk attack manipulates a field in TCP/IP packets, called a fragment offset. This field tells a computer how to reconstruct a packet that was broken up (fragmented), because it was too big to transmit in a whole piece. By manipulating this number, the Bonk attack causes the target machine to reassemble a packet that is much too big to be reassembled. This causes the target computer to crash. A simple reboot is usually sufficient to recover from this attack. It is possible that unsaved data in applications open at the time of attack will be lost.

Related Terms

Bonk attack