Information Technology Specialist (ITS) Cybersecurity Practice Exam

What attack technique uses an excessive amount of requests to drain system resources?

1. DNS Spoofing

2. DoS Attack

3. ARP Spoofing

4. DDoS Attack

The correct answer is: DoS Attack

The technique that utilizes an excessive amount of requests to deplete system resources is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. This attack aims to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by overwhelming it with a flood of illegitimate requests. The intent is to exhaust resources such as bandwidth, CPU, memory, or the operating system itself, causing legitimate requests to either be severely delayed or entirely fail. In a typical DoS attack, a single source is sending large volumes of requests, which can be achieved using various methods, including exploiting software vulnerabilities or creating malicious traffic patterns. As resources become exhausted, the affected system may slow down or become unresponsive, thereby denying service to legitimate users. While other techniques, like DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, involve multiple sources to amplify the effect of the attack, the question specifically refers to the technique that focuses on a single system’s resources being drained, which aligns with the characteristics of a DoS attack. Other options such as DNS Spoofing and ARP Spoofing pertain to different types of attacks aimed at manipulating or deceiving network communications, rather than overwhelming system resources.