What is the primary goal of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack?

What is the primary goal of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack?

• A. To steal sensitive data
• B. To degrade performance or make a service inaccessible
• C. To inject code into a program
• D. To perform man-in-the-middle attacks

Answer: (B)

Denial of Service attacks are all about availability. The main aim is to disrupt access to a service for legitimate users by overwhelming its resources or its network bandwidth, causing slowdowns or outages. That’s why describing the goal as degrading performance or making a service inaccessible is the best match. Other attack types focus on different objectives—stealing sensitive data targets confidentiality, injecting code aims at altering or compromising software, and man-in-the-middle attacks seek to intercept communications—so they aren’t about making the service unavailable, which is the essence of a DoS.

Denial of Service attacks are all about availability. The main aim is to disrupt access to a service for legitimate users by overwhelming its resources or its network bandwidth, causing slowdowns or outages. That’s why describing the goal as degrading performance or making a service inaccessible is the best match. Other attack types focus on different objectives—stealing sensitive data targets confidentiality, injecting code aims at altering or compromising software, and man-in-the-middle attacks seek to intercept communications—so they aren’t about making the service unavailable, which is the essence of a DoS.