CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 Practice Question

The correct answer is a DDoS attack. This type of attack floods the server with an excessive amount of traffic, intending to exceed the server's capacity to handle requests, leading to inaccessibility for legitimate users. The described symptoms—high traffic volume and service-specific disruption without affecting the entire network—are indicative of such an attack. Incorrect answers offer alternatives such as ARP spoofing, which might lead to network connectivity problems, but does not typically cause a massive surge in traffic to one particular service. Likewise, problems with the switching infrastructure or a misconfigured ACL, while they can cause network issues, wouldn't typically result in a sudden increase in traffic and would be more likely to affect multiple services or result in different symptoms.