Rich Smith as quoted in Permanent Denial-of-Service Attack Sabotages Hardware

We aren’t seeing the PDOS attack as a way to mask another attack, such as malware insertion, but as a logical and highly destructive extension of the DDOS [dedicated denial of service] criminal extortion tactics seen in use today.

So this is about corporate sabatoge? Or criminals wiping out a few routers and extorting money for keeping the rest of the company’s network operational? Wow.  Sounds like a good plot for a John Grisham book. 

Rich Smith (HP System Security Lab)  has even come up with a cool name for the attacks: phlashing.  And the fuzzing tool he developedfor either launching an attack or detecting vulnerabilities? PhlashDance.