Which type of attack involves overwhelming a system with traffic to render it unavailable to users?

A DoS (Denial of Service) attack is characterized by overwhelming a system with an excessive amount of traffic or requests, effectively exhausting the system's resources and preventing legitimate users from accessing the service. This type of attack exploits the limitations of network bandwidth, server capacity, or application performance to disrupt normal operations.

In a DoS attack, the attacker generates a high volume of traffic aimed at a target system, such as a website or server. When the traffic surpasses the system's ability to handle requests, either due to bandwidth saturation or resource exhaustion, it leads to service unavailability. This makes it crucial for organizations to implement robust traffic management and security measures to mitigate the impact of potential DoS attacks.

Other types of attacks, such as phishing or man-in-the-middle attacks, have different objectives and methods. Phishing focuses on tricking users into revealing sensitive information, while man-in-the-middle attacks seek to intercept and manipulate communications between two parties. Brute force attacks aim to crack passwords or encryption keys by trying many combinations. None of these methods are designed to overwhelm a system with traffic in the way a DoS attack does, reinforcing the unique nature of the DoS attack in its goal of causing service disruption.