The ultimate goal of a DoS attack is to ________.

• A. Cause harm
• B. Frustrate users
• C. Practice hacking
• D. None of the above

Answer: (A)

The core effect of a DoS attack is to deny access to a service, making it unavailable to legitimate users. That disruption can cause real harm to an organization—downtime, lost revenue, and damage to reputation. While frustrated users may be a visible result, the attacker’s objective is the service disruption itself, which is why “cause harm” best captures the intent. It isn’t about practicing hacking, and it isn’t about simply frustrating users; the aim is to degrade or stop the service. So, the most accurate answer is that the goal is to cause harm by denying service.