Palo Alto Networks (PANW) Certified Cybersecurity Entry-level Technician (PCCET) Practice Exam

Which type of cyberattack sends extremely high volumes of network traffic, making the victim's network unavailable?

1. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)

2. Spamming botnet

3. Phishing botnet

4. Denial-of-service (DoS)

The correct answer is: Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)

The correct answer identifies a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which is characterized by overwhelming a target network with an enormous volume of traffic in order to render it unavailable to legitimate users. In a DDoS attack, multiple compromised systems or botnets are used to flood the target with traffic, significantly amplifying the attack's impact. This network overload can cause significant disruptions, as it saturates the bandwidth of the victim's network, leading to degraded performance or complete outage. In contrast, a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack typically originates from a single source and doesn't leverage multiple compromised systems, making it generally less impactful than its distributed counterpart. A spamming botnet focuses on sending out unsolicited bulk messages rather than overwhelming network traffic, while phishing botnets are designed to steal sensitive information by impersonating legitimate entities rather than causing service interruptions. Each of these other types of attacks serves different malicious purposes and operates under different mechanisms compared to a DDoS attack.