What kind of attack involves overwhelming a network with traffic?

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is characterized by overwhelming a network with excessive traffic in an attempt to render a service unavailable to its intended users. The primary goal of a DoS attack is to flood the target’s bandwidth or resources, making it impossible for legitimate requests to be processed. This can lead to significant downtime for websites or services, causing disruption and potentially severe financial consequences for organizations affected by the attack.

In contrast, phishing attacks focus on deceiving individuals to acquire sensitive information, while Man-in-the-Middle attacks involve intercepting communications between two parties. SQL Injection attacks specifically target databases with malicious queries, aiming to manipulate and retrieve sensitive data. Each of these attacks has a different mechanism and intent, but a DoS attack's hallmark is its focus on traffic overload to disrupt the availability of a network service.