CompTIA Security+ (SY0-501) — Question 996

A malicious system continuously sends an extremely large number of SYN packets to a server. Which of the following BEST describes the resulting effect?

Answer options

• A. The server will be unable to server clients due to lack of bandwidth
• B. The server's firewall will be unable to effectively filter traffic due to the amount of data transmitted
• C. The server will crash when trying to reassemble all the fragmented packets
• D. The server will exhaust its memory maintaining half-open connections

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The correct answer is D because a flood of SYN packets can overwhelm the server's resources, leading to a situation where it cannot maintain all the half-open connections, consuming memory. Option A is incorrect as bandwidth is not the main issue; options B and C are also incorrect as they misinterpret the server's response to SYN flooding, which mainly affects connection management rather than filtering or crashing.