Which type of attack aims to overwhelm a target’s resources?

A denial of service (DoS) attack is specifically designed to overwhelm a target's resources, rendering it inaccessible to intended users. This type of attack works by flooding the target—such as a web server or network—with excessive amounts of traffic or requests, which exhausts its capacity to handle legitimate requests. As a result, the system becomes slow, unreliable, or completely offline for users. Denial of service attacks can have significant impacts on organizations by interrupting services, damaging reputations, and resulting in financial losses.

Other types of attacks, such as phishing, are aimed at tricking individuals into providing sensitive information or installing malware, rather than overwhelming resources. Man-in-the-middle attacks involve intercepting and manipulating communications between two parties without their knowledge, while SQL injection targets databases by injecting malicious SQL code to manipulate data. None of these methods focus on resource overwhelming in the way a denial of service attack does.