An attack that overwhelms network servers by sending a large number of false requests, denying service to legitimate users, is called?

• A. Denial of Service (DoS)
• B. Man-in-the-Middle
• C. Phishing
• D. Spoofing

Answer: (A)

An attack that floods a service with an overwhelming amount of traffic or requests to make it unavailable to legitimate users is a Denial of Service. The basic idea is to exhaust the target’s resources—bandwidth, CPU, memory—so the server can’t process normal requests, effectively denying service to those who should be able to access it. Attackers might flood with connection attempts, data packets, or high-volume requests at the application level, all aimed at consuming what the service needs to operate. This differs from others like Man-in-the-Middle (which targets confidentiality and integrity by intercepting communications), Phishing (a social-engineering method to steal credentials), or Spoofing (impersonating a source). Denial of Service focuses specifically on making a service unavailable by overwhelming it.