What is a DDoS attack and how does it overwhelm websites with massive traffic from multiple IP addresses? Learn the signs, impact, and defense strategies against Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks—essential for CompTIA Security+ (Plus) SY0-701 exam success.
Table of Contents
Question
Your company’s website is suddenly overwhelmed with traffic, making it inaccessible. Further investigation shows a massive number of requests coming from different IP addresses. Which attack is occurring?
A. Man-in-the-middle
B. DDoS
C. Session hijacking
D. DNS poisoning
E. ARP spoofing
Answer
B. DDoS
Explanation
A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack floods a system with traffic from multiple sources, rendering it unusable.
When a company’s website is suddenly overwhelmed with traffic and becomes inaccessible, with a massive number of requests coming from different IP addresses, this is a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack.
A DDoS attack floods a target website or network with enormous volumes of traffic from multiple sources, often using a botnet of compromised devices. The goal is to exceed the website’s capacity to handle requests, causing slowdowns or complete outages for legitimate users.
Attackers use various techniques, such as HTTP floods, UDP floods, or DNS amplification, but the defining feature is the distributed nature—traffic comes from many IP addresses, making it difficult to block by simply filtering one source.
The primary impact is service disruption, resulting in downtime, financial losses, reputational damage, and potential loss of customer trust.
DDoS attacks can last from hours to days and may target different layers of the network or application stack, sometimes using multi-vector strategies to evade defenses.
Effective defense requires specialized mitigation tools that can distinguish legitimate traffic from attack traffic and absorb or block malicious requests.
A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack overwhelms a system with traffic from multiple sources, rendering the website or service unusable for legitimate users.
CompTIA Security+ (Plus) SY0-701 certification exam practice question and answer (Q&A) dump with detail explanation and reference available free, helpful to pass the CompTIA Security+ (Plus) SY0-701 exam and earn CompTIA Security+ (Plus) SY0-701 certification.