312-50V9 · Question #612
How does a denial-of-service attack work?
The correct answer is A. A hacker prevents a legitimate user (or group of users) from accessing a service. A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is defined as any attack that prevents legitimate users from accessing a service or resource.
Question
How does a denial-of-service attack work?
Options
- AA hacker prevents a legitimate user (or group of users) from accessing a service
- BA hacker uses every character, word, or letter he or she can think of to defeat authentication
- CA hacker tries to decipher a password by using a system, which subsequently crashes the network
- DA hacker attempts to imitate a legitimate user by confusing a computer or even another person
How the community answered
(21 responses)- A90% (19)
- B5% (1)
- D5% (1)
Why each option
A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is defined as any attack that prevents legitimate users from accessing a service or resource.
A DoS attack works by overwhelming, crashing, or otherwise making a service unavailable so that legitimate users cannot access it; this is the core NIST and industry-standard definition of DoS. The attacker's goal is availability disruption rather than confidentiality or integrity breach.
Trying every possible character or word combination to defeat authentication describes a brute-force attack, not a denial-of-service attack.
Attempting to decipher a password describes a password-cracking attack; crashing a network as a side effect is incidental and does not define the DoS category.
Impersonating a legitimate user to confuse a system or person describes either a spoofing or social engineering attack, not a denial-of-service attack.
Concept tested: Definition and mechanism of DoS attacks
Source: https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/denial_of_service_attack
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