What is a "denial-of-service (DoS)" attack?
2025
What is a "denial-of-service (DoS)" attack?
Answer: C. An attack that floods a network with traffic to disrupt services — Correct answer: An attack that floods a network with traffic to disrupt services. Explanation: A denial-of-service (DoS) attack aims to overwhelm a system,…
- A.
An attack that intercepts communication between two parties
- B.
An attack that exploits vulnerabilities in software to gain unauthorized access
- C.
An attack that floods a network with traffic to disrupt services
- D.
An attack that uses malicious emails to trick users into revealing sensitive information
Attempted by 33 students.
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Correct answer: C
Correct answer: An attack that floods a network with traffic to disrupt services.
Explanation: A denial-of-service (DoS) attack aims to overwhelm a system, application, or network with excessive traffic or requests so that legitimate users cannot access the service.
How it works: the attacker sends large volumes of traffic or resource-consuming requests (examples include SYN floods or UDP floods) to exhaust capacity.
Distributed attacks: when the traffic comes from many compromised devices it is called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which is harder to block.
Common mitigations: rate limiting, traffic filtering, using content delivery networks (CDNs) and dedicated DDoS protection services.