A ping of death is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. To start the attack, one sends a malicious data packet to the target. When the data packet is processed by the target system, the system encounters an error that causes it to crash.
Conceptually, the ping of death is comparable to a mail bomb: If the recipient opens the package, a mechanism is activated and the target is attacked and in the worst case destroyed. The ping command, from which the attack gets its name, is usually used to test whether a network is reachable. It’s based on the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), which is used to communicate status information on the Internet.
There are various attacks that fall under the umbrella of denial of service attacks. The ping of death and SYN flood are both protocol attacks. In addition, there are also attacks on the application layer, for example HTTP floods. And lastly, volumetric attacks inflict damage by flooding their target with a stream of data. They include ping floods as well as UDP floods.