Ethical Hacking Essentials Practice Test

What type of vulnerabilities tend to lead to denial of service attacks?

1. Authentication Vulnerabilities

2. Input Validation Vulnerabilities

3. Network Configuration Vulnerabilities

4. Session Management Vulnerabilities

The correct answer is: Input Validation Vulnerabilities

Input validation vulnerabilities typically allow attackers to send unexpected or malicious data to a system, which can lead to denial of service (DoS) attacks. When an application does not properly validate input, it may inadvertently process excessive data or execute resource-intensive operations. This misuse can result in the system becoming overwhelmed, causing it to slow down or crash—effectively denying access to legitimate users. By failing to enforce strict input validation, an application can be exploited to consume resources such as CPU, memory, or bandwidth. This impact directly correlates to causing disruptions in service availability, which is the hallmark of a denial of service attack. The other vulnerability types, while significant in their own contexts, do not primarily lead to such service disruption through the manipulation of input data.