Which Attack Impacts a Web-Based Customer Portal's Availability?
Short answer
C A denial-of-service (DoS) attack exhausts the web-based customer portal's bandwidth, connections, CPU, or memory so legitimate customers cannot access it.
Question
Key Takeaways
It tests the CIA availability impact of a DoS attack, and the main trap is choosing attacks such as ARP spoofing or MAC flooding that disrupt a local network or enable interception rather than directly overwhelming the portal service.
This Network+ question asks which attack directly reduces the availability of a web-based customer portal; the correct answer is C, a DoS attack. It contrasts direct service resource exhaustion with local network disruption, interception and unauthorized devices.
Common mistake: A common wrong answer is B, ARP spoofing, because it can disrupt traffic and look like an availability issue; however, it primarily enables man-in-the-middle interception on a local segment rather than exhausting the web portal's resources.
Expert Analysis
The boundary: service availability vs. local disruption
This question asks which option impacts the availability of a web-based customer portal, not which option can cause any kind of network trouble. Availability here means legitimate customers can reach and use the portal. The decisive test is whether the attack directly consumes the portal's service resources — bandwidth, TCP connections, CPU, memory or application worker capacity — or merely disrupts a local segment, enables interception, or introduces an unauthorized device.
Why C is the direct answer
C. DoS sits on the service-availability side of that boundary. A denial-of-service attack targets the portal with excessive requests or traffic until the service cannot respond to real users. The supplied reasoning makes the same point: DoS is designed to overwhelm a target with traffic or requests, exhausting resources so the portal becomes inaccessible.
Why the other options cross a different boundary
A. MAC flooding exhausts a switch's CAM table and can cause flooding or local degradation, but its focus is Layer 2 forwarding, not the portal's application resources. B. ARP spoofing is primarily a man-in-the-middle technique; it threatens confidentiality and integrity by poisoning ARP mappings, even if disruption follows. D. Rogue devices (written "Rouge" in the option) are unauthorized endpoints or access points; they create policy and access-control risk, not a direct resource-exhaustion attack on the portal.
Exam takeaway
When an option list mixes attack types, map each one to the CIA triad and its scope. For an explicit availability question about a public web service, choose the attack that directly denies the service: C. DoS.
Official Reference
- https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/denial_of_service
- https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/availability
These links open the official vendor documentation in a new tab.
Exam Strategy
When an attack question asks about availability, map each option to the CIA triad and to its scope before selecting. Ask whether the option directly consumes the named service's resources or instead disrupts a local segment, enables interception, or introduces unauthorized access. For a public web portal, the direct resource-exhaustion choice is DoS, not Layer 2 flooding or ARP poisoning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is ARP spoofing not the answer when it can disrupt a customer portal?
Can MAC flooding make a web portal unavailable?
What makes a rogue device different from a DoS attack?
Discussion 1 contributions
Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.
From public community threads 1
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ERB14 👍 1 Answered CA Denial of Service (DoS) attack is specifically designed to overwhelm a target server or system with excessive traffic or requests. This exhausts system resources (such as bandwidth, CPU, or memory), rendering the web-based customer portal inaccessible or unavailable to legitimate users.
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