Q

QuestionNetwork Plus Certification

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is a type of cyber attack where the attacker seeks to make a machine, network, or service unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services. There are two common types of DoS attacks: Smurf Attack and Syn Flood.

A Smurf Attack is a form of DoS attack that exploits the Internet Protocol (IP) and ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) to flood a network with traffic. The attacker sends a ping request to a broadcast address, with the source address spoofed as the victim's IP address. As a result, all hosts on the network respond to the broadcast address, overwhelming the victim's network with traffic.

A Syn Flood is a type of DoS attack that exploits the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) three-way handshake process. In this attack, the attacker sends a large number of SYN requests to a server, but never responds to the server's SYN-ACK response. As a result, the server keeps waiting for the final ACK, which never arrives, leading to a buildup of half-open connections and eventually overwhelming the server.

The other options, Rootkits and botnets, are not types of DoS attacks but rather tools used by attackers to carry out such attacks. Rootkits are malicious software that provide unauthorized access to a computer, while botnets are networks of compromised computers that can be controlled remotely to carry out coordinated attacks.