What is the term for a flood of SYN packets used to overwhelm a target?

What is the term for a flood of SYN packets used to overwhelm a target?

• A. Bypass Detection
• B. Enumerate Services
• C. Trace Route
• D. SYN Flood

Answer: (D)

A SYN flood is a denial-of-service attack that overwhelms a target by sending a large volume of TCP SYN packets, initiating connections but never completing the three-way handshake. The server allocates resources for each SYN and waits for the final ACK; when attacker floods with SYNs, many half-open connections pile up in the backlog, exhausting memory and processing capacity so legitimate clients can’t establish new connections. This is different from the other terms: bypass detection suggests evading security, enumerating services means scanning to find open ports/services, and traceroute is used to map the network path to a destination. Mitigations include using SYN cookies, increasing the backlog judiciously, and applying rate limiting.

A SYN flood is a denial-of-service attack that overwhelms a target by sending a large volume of TCP SYN packets, initiating connections but never completing the three-way handshake. The server allocates resources for each SYN and waits for the final ACK; when attacker floods with SYNs, many half-open connections pile up in the backlog, exhausting memory and processing capacity so legitimate clients can’t establish new connections. This is different from the other terms: bypass detection suggests evading security, enumerating services means scanning to find open ports/services, and traceroute is used to map the network path to a destination. Mitigations include using SYN cookies, increasing the backlog judiciously, and applying rate limiting.