If a firewall drops valid non-attack packets due to high load, this can be described as what?

• A. Reduces throughput
• B. Increases latency
• C. Self-generated Denial of Service attack
• D. Improves security

Answer: (C)

When a device runs out of processing power or memory due to high traffic, it can’t handle legitimate packets and ends up dropping them. That creates a Denial of Service condition, but the important part is that the overload originates from the firewall itself—not from an external attacker flooding the network. In other words, the firewall’s own resource exhaustion causes legitimate traffic to be blocked, which is a self-generated Denial of Service. While reduced throughput or increased latency are signs of this problem, the situation is best described as a self-generated DoS because it’s the device’s overload that leads to denial of service.