What is a DDoS attack?

What is a DDoS attack?

• A. A coordinated flood of requests to overwhelm a site
• B. An attack that steals passwords
• C. A method to encrypt data
• D. A phishing technique

Answer: (A)

A DDoS attack is about taking a service offline by overwhelming it with traffic from many different sources. It uses a coordinated flood, often from a botnet, to exhaust a website’s bandwidth or server resources so legitimate users can’t access the site or it becomes very slow. Because the traffic comes from multiple machines, it’s hard to block with a single countermeasure, which is what makes it “distributed.” This focuses on availability—keeping a service up and usable—rather than stealing data, encrypting data, or tricking people into giving information. Attacks that try to steal passwords, encrypt data, or phish target confidentiality or user trust, not service availability, which is why this description best fits a DDoS.

A DDoS attack is about taking a service offline by overwhelming it with traffic from many different sources. It uses a coordinated flood, often from a botnet, to exhaust a website’s bandwidth or server resources so legitimate users can’t access the site or it becomes very slow. Because the traffic comes from multiple machines, it’s hard to block with a single countermeasure, which is what makes it “distributed.” This focuses on availability—keeping a service up and usable—rather than stealing data, encrypting data, or tricking people into giving information. Attacks that try to steal passwords, encrypt data, or phish target confidentiality or user trust, not service availability, which is why this description best fits a DDoS.