A notorious {exploit} that (when first discovered) could be easily
used to crash a wide variety of machines by overrunning size limits
in their TCP/IP stacks. First revealed in late 1996. The open-source
Unix community patched its systems to remove the vulnerability within
days or weeks, the closed-source OS vendors generally took months.
While the difference in response times repeated a pattern familiar
from other security incidents, the accompanying glare of Web-fueled
publicity proved unusually embarrassing to the OS vendors and so
passed into history and myth. The term is now used to refer to any
nudge delivered by network wizards over the network that causes bad
things to happen on the system being nudged. For the full story on
the original exploit, see
http://www.insecure.org/sploits/ping-o-death.html. Compare {kamikaze
packet} and 'Chernobyl packet.'
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {Death, X of}{exploit}]