Which term describes an attack intended to make a service unavailable by overwhelming a server?

Which term describes an attack intended to make a service unavailable by overwhelming a server?

• A. Data exfiltration
• B. Privilege escalation
• C. Denial-of-Service (DoS)
• D. SQL Injection

Answer: (C)

A Denial-of-Service attack is an attempt to make a service unavailable by overwhelming a server with traffic or requests, exhausting bandwidth, CPU, or memory so legitimate users can’t access the service. This disrupts availability rather than stealing data or gaining higher privileges. Other concepts involve different goals: data exfiltration is about stealing information, privilege escalation is about increasing access rights, and SQL injection targets a database by injecting malicious input. If multiple sources are used, the attack is often called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).

A Denial-of-Service attack is an attempt to make a service unavailable by overwhelming a server with traffic or requests, exhausting bandwidth, CPU, or memory so legitimate users can’t access the service. This disrupts availability rather than stealing data or gaining higher privileges. Other concepts involve different goals: data exfiltration is about stealing information, privilege escalation is about increasing access rights, and SQL injection targets a database by injecting malicious input. If multiple sources are used, the attack is often called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).