Which statement accurately defines a direct flood attack?

• A. The attacker floods the victim directly from the attacker's own computer.
• B. The attacker floods the victim by using compromised hosts under control of the attacker.
• C. The attacker floods using router misconfiguration to redirect traffic.
• D. Only legitimate traffic is used to overwhelm the victim.

Answer: (A)

A direct flood attack means the attacker uses their own system’s bandwidth to send a surge of traffic directly to the victim, overwhelming it without involving other compromised hosts or third-party reflectors. The traffic originates from the attacker’s machine, which is why this is described as a direct flood.

This fits the scenario where the attacker’s own computer is the source of the flood. In contrast, involving compromised hosts under the attacker’s control would create a flood from many machines (a botnet), which is not direct. Using router misconfigurations to redirect traffic describes a different tactic, not a direct flood from the attacker. Relying on only legitimate traffic isn’t a flood attack at all.