In a basic SYN flood attack, what is the attacker attempting to achieve?

The correct answer is A. Exceed the threshold limit of the connection queue for a given service. A SYN flood attack is a type of denial-of-service attack that exploits the TCP three-way handshake process. The attacker sends a large number of SYN packets to the target server, often with spoofed IP addresses, and does not complete the handshake by sending the final ACK packet.

Submitted by tunde_lagos· Mar 5, 2026Communication and Network Security

Question

Options

AExceed the threshold limit of the connection queue for a given service
BSet the threshold to zero for a given service
CCause the buffer to overflow, allowing root access
DFlush the register stack, allowing hijacking of the root account

How the community answered

(40 responses)

A
85% (34)
B
8% (3)
C
3% (1)
D
5% (2)

Explanation

A SYN flood attack is a type of denial-of-service attack that exploits the TCP three-way handshake process. The attacker sends a large number of SYN packets to the target server, often with spoofed IP addresses, and does not complete the handshake by sending the final ACK packet. This causes the server to allocate resources for half-open connections, which eventually consume all the available ports and prevent legitimate traffic from reaching the server

Topics

#SYN flood#DoS attack#TCP/IP handshake#network attack

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