Which term describes an attack that exhausts network bandwidth by flooding traffic?

• A. IP address spoofing
• B. Man-in-the-middle attack
• C. Denial of Service attack
• D. Session sniffing

Answer: (C)

A Denial of Service attack is an attempt to make a service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic or exhausting its resources. When the description says it exhausts network bandwidth by flooding traffic, it directly points to this type of attack, since the flood consumes the available bandwidth and prevents legitimate users from accessing the service.

IP address spoofing involves disguising the true source of traffic, which can be used in some attacks but doesn’t by itself describe bandwidth saturation. A man-in-the-middle attack intercepts and possibly alters communications between two parties, not specifically about flooding bandwidth. Session sniffing is about monitoring and recording network traffic, not disrupting service. So the term that best matches the scenario is Denial of Service.