Certified Incident Handler (CIH) Practice Ecam

What type of security threat was identified by Jason due to heavy traffic preventing access for authorized customers?

1. Man-in-the-middle attack

2. Denial-of-service incident

3. Ransomware attack

4. Data theft incident

The correct answer is: Denial-of-service incident

The correct answer is a denial-of-service incident. This type of threat occurs when an attacker overwhelms a network, service, or application with excessive traffic, which leads to legitimate users being unable to access the resources they need. In this situation, Jason observed heavy traffic that was preventing authorized customers from accessing the service, which aligns perfectly with the characteristics of a denial-of-service incident. When legitimate users are unable to connect due to deliberate or accidental flood of requests, it showcases the essence of denial-of-service, where the availability of services is compromised. This can lead to frustration among users and potentially significant impacts on business operations, customer confidence, and overall service reliability. While other security threats like man-in-the-middle attacks, ransomware, and data theft do pose significant risks to data integrity and confidentiality, they do not specifically cause heavy traffic to block access for legitimate users in the same manner that a denial-of-service incident does. Therefore, the scenario clearly fits the context of a denial-of-service incident.