ICMP Flood Attack Causes Major Network Outage

A coordinated ICMP flood attack severely disrupted network services across multiple regions in **Pakistan**, affecting both public and private sector institutions. The attack, which involved a continuous stream of ICMP echo requests (ping floods), overloaded network equipment and servers, leading to temporary outages and degraded connectivity for several internet service providers.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) confirmed the widespread nature of the attack and stated that investigations are underway to determine the source and scope of the intrusion. Critical infrastructure including online banking services, educational portals, and government communication systems experienced intermittent failures during the peak of the incident, particularly in Islamabad and Lahore.

Cybersecurity experts are advising all organizations to update their firewall rules and rate-limit ICMP traffic wherever possible. As part of the national response, CERT-PK is coordinating with local ISPs to strengthen mitigation frameworks and improve incident response times. The attack underscores the growing threat of volumetric DDoS campaigns in the South Asian region.

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