Ethical Hacking Essentials Practice Test

Which attack involves sending spoofed UDP packets at a high packet rate to a target server?

1. UDP Flood Attack

2. SYN Flood Attack

3. Ping of Death Attack

4. PDoS Attack

The correct answer is: UDP Flood Attack

The attack that involves sending spoofed UDP packets at a high packet rate to a target server is known as a UDP Flood Attack. This method exploits the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) by overwhelming the target with numerous UDP packets, which can lead to resource exhaustion. When the target server receives these packets, it may attempt to respond to them, often resulting in a denial of service (DoS) as it becomes overloaded with traffic. The use of spoofed packets helps the attacker mask their identity and location by faking the source address, making it difficult for network administrators to trace the attack back to its origin. In understanding why this is the correct choice, it's important to note the characteristics of the other attacks listed. A SYN Flood Attack involves sending a high volume of SYN packets to initiate TCP connections but does not focus on UDP or rely on the same protocols. The Ping of Death Attack is a legacy attack that involves sending maliciously crafted ping packets to crash the target, again differing from the nature of a UDP-based attack. Finally, a PDoS Attack, or Permanent Denial of Service Attack, often employs different tactics and targets more maintainable services or hardware, leading to prolonged outages rather than the rapid packet flooding characterized by UDP Flood Attacks