Question

What is the purpose of a SYN flood?

a. Fill up connection buffers at the operating system
b. Fill up connection buffers in the web server
c. Fill up connection buffers at the Application layer
d. Fill up connection buffers for UDP

Answer 1

A SYN flood's purpose is to disrupt normal server operations by overwhelming the connection buffers at the operating system level, preventing legitimate users from establishing a connection.

Step-by-step explanation:

The purpose of a SYN flood attack is to fill up connection buffers at the operating system level on a server. During a SYN flood, an attacker sends a succession of SYN requests to a target's system in an attempt to consume enough server resources to make the system unresponsive to legitimate traffic. This is done by not completing the TCP three-way handshake, which is initiated by the SYN packet. The server allocates resources after receiving the SYN request and waits for the final packet in the handshake, which never arrives, leading to a depletion of available connections for legitimate users.