Final answer:
A Smurf attack, SYN flood attack, and UDP flood attack are all types of DoS attacks that aim to overwhelm a system with excessive traffic, causing a denial of service. Option D) All of the above is the correct answer.
Step-by-step explanation:
DoS attacks, or Denial of Service attacks, are a type of cyber threat where an attacker attempts to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to the internet. Among the listed options, A) Smurf attack, B) SYN flood attack, and C) UDP flood attack, each represents a different method of executing a DoS attack.
Types of DoS Attacks:
- Smurf attack: In this attack, an attacker sends a large number of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets to an IP broadcast address. All devices on the target network respond to these requests, consuming significant bandwidth and resources.
- SYN flood attack: By sending a flood of SYN requests to a target's system in an attempt to consume enough server resources to make the system unresponsive to legitimate traffic, the attacker exploits the handshake process of a TCP/IP session.
- UDP flood attack: This is achieved by sending a large number of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets to random ports on a remote host, causing the host to repeatedly check for the application listening at that port and respond with an ICMP 'Destination Unreachable' packet, thus overwhelming the network.
All of these attacks are designed to overload the target system with excessive requests, leading to overconsumption of resources and denial of service to legitimate users. Therefore, the correct answer to the question is D) All of the above.