Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v12) — Question 124

A large enterprise has been experiencing sporadic system crashes and instability, resulting in limited access to its web services. The security team suspects it could be a result of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. A significant increase in traffic was noticed in the network logs, with patterns suggesting packet sizes exceeding the prescribed size limit. Which among the following DoS attack techniques best describes this scenario?

Answer options

• A. Smurf attack
• B. UDP flood attack
• C. Pulse wave attack
• D. Ping of Death attack

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The Ping of Death attack involves sending oversized packets that exceed the maximum allowed size, causing systems to crash or become unstable. This aligns perfectly with the organization's experience of increased traffic and packet size issues. The other options, while they are legitimate DoS attacks, do not specifically involve exceeding packet size limits in the same way.