Yes, you only need a single laptop with a decent internet connection, rather a massive botnet, to launch overwhelming denial of service (DoS) attacks in order to bring down major Internet servers and modern-day firewalls.
Researchers at TDC Security Operations Center have discovered a new attack technique that lone attackers with limited resources (in this case, a laptop and at least 15Mbps of bandwidth) can use to knock large servers offline.
Dubbed a BlackNurse attack or the low-rate “Ping of Death” attack, the technique can be used to launch several low-volume DoS attacks by sending specially formed Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets, or ‘pings’ that overwhelm the processors on server protected by firewalls from Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, among others.
ICMP is a protocol used by routers and other networking devices to send and receive error messages.
Source: Even A Single Computer Can Take Down Big Servers Using BlackNurse Attack
