Twinge attack

An Internet-based computer-networking term. A Twinge attack is a flood of false ICMP packets in an attempt to cripple a system.

The attack is spoofed, that is random fake Internet source addresses are used which makes it difficult to identify the attacker. The idea of the attack is to either degrade the performance of the attacked computer or make it crash. The attacking program is called Twinge, but the ICMP packets have a particular signature which gives its identity away.

As long as the computer is safely behind a router or a firewall, there is nothing to worry about with this attack. This attack is not used to compromise a system to steal information from it, it is simply an annoyance. An easy way to avoid this attack is to set the router or firewall to ignore ICMP or ping packets from the Internet.