Smurfing, in the context of gaming, is when a highly skilled player intentionally plays against, and often humiliates, less skilled players. The user usually has an older account on the gaming forum and will create a new alias for the purpose of smurfing. Under the new alias, the user plays poorly and earns a low rank, purposefully losing some matches so that a beginner will challenge him to play. Once challenged, the user will easily beat the low-ranked player and tend to humiliate him.
Smurfing is also a term for a type of Denial of Service cyber attack. The attacker will send a ping message to a particular broadcaster, whereby the receiver automatically replies. So, by sending 255 ping messages to the broadcaster, for example, it will crash because all resources will be used up in an attempt to automatically reply to all 255 messages. This type of security threat attempts to disable a computer rather than steal information.
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