What type of attack aims to overload a network or system by flooding it with excessive traffic?

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is designed to overwhelm a network or system by inundating it with an excessive volume of traffic or requests. The primary goal of this attack is to make the targeted service unavailable to legitimate users by draining resources, such as bandwidth, memory, or CPU power. When successfully executed, a DoS attack can cause significant disruptions, leading to business downtime and losses for the affected organization.

In contrast, phishing attacks focus on deceiving users into divulging sensitive information, such as passwords or financial details, by impersonating a trustworthy entity. Man-in-the-middle attacks intercept and potentially alter the communication between two parties without their knowledge but do not typically aim to flood systems with traffic. SQL injection attacks involve inserting malicious code into a query to manipulate databases, primarily targeting data integrity rather than availability. Each of these attacks has distinct methodologies and objectives, making the DoS attack unique in its approach to network and system overload.