Ethical Hacking Essentials Practice Test

What type of attack leads to system crashes and creates a denial of service?

1. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS)

2. Phishing

3. SQL Injection

4. Man-in-the-browser attack

The correct answer is: Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS)

A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is designed specifically to overwhelm a target's resources, such as a server or network, by flooding it with a massive amount of traffic from multiple sources. This flood of traffic can incapacitate the target system, rendering it unable to respond to legitimate requests. As a result, users may experience delays or complete unavailability of services, leading to the denial of service. DDoS attacks commonly utilize botnets, which are networks of compromised computers, to carry out the attack on a large scale. In contrast, the other types of attacks listed, such as phishing, SQL injection, and man-in-the-browser attacks, focus on different goals like stealing sensitive information, exploiting database vulnerabilities, or intercepting user sessions. While these attacks can compromise system integrity and privacy, they do not primarily aim to cause system crashes or result in a denial of service in the same manner as a DDoS attack does.