What type of attack sends SYN requests to a target system with spoofed IP addresses?

The correct answer is A. SYN flood. A SYN flood is a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack that exploits the TCP three-way handshake. The attacker sends a large volume of SYN (synchronize) packets to the target with spoofed (forged) source IP addresses. The target responds with SYN-ACK packets and waits for the final…

Submitted by valeria.br· Apr 18, 2026Network Forensics

Question

Options

ASYN flood
BPing of death
CCross site scripting
DLand

How the community answered

(48 responses)

A
90% (43)
B
6% (3)
C
2% (1)
D
2% (1)

Explanation

A SYN flood is a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack that exploits the TCP three-way handshake. The attacker sends a large volume of SYN (synchronize) packets to the target with spoofed (forged) source IP addresses. The target responds with SYN-ACK packets and waits for the final ACK that never arrives, because the spoofed IPs either don't exist or belong to unsuspecting third parties. This exhausts the target's connection table (backlog queue), preventing legitimate connections. The other options are different attacks: Ping of Death sends oversized ICMP packets, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) injects malicious scripts into web pages, and a Land attack sends a SYN packet where the source and destination IP/port are the same as the target.

Topics

#SYN flood#Denial of Service#Network attack#IP spoofing

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