A network administrator notices extensive damage to wireless packets. This might indicate a ________ attack.

• A. Man-in-the-middle
• B. SYN/ACK
• C. None of the above
• D. DoS flood attack

Answer: (D)

Extensive damage to wireless packets is a sign of a DoS flood attack. In a flood, an attacker generates a large volume of traffic to overwhelm the target’s resources or the wireless medium itself. On a Wi‑Fi network, this means the airtime is consumed by the flood frames, leading to increased collisions, channel saturation, and processing delays. As a result, legitimate packets are delayed, dropped, or corrupted, degrading availability for users.

This fits better than a man-in-the-middle scenario, which centers on covertly intercepting or altering traffic rather than overwhelming the network with traffic. A simple reference to a SYN/ACK isn’t a precise description of the attack type, since the core impact described is the overload of the network, not just the TCP handshake. And there is indeed a valid DoS flood attack in the options, so “None of the above” doesn’t apply.