Which type of attack is characterized by overwhelming a system with traffic to disrupt service?

The type of attack characterized by overwhelming a system with traffic to disrupt service is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. In this context, a DoS attack seeks to render a service unavailable to its intended users by flooding the target with an excessive amount of requests. This influx of traffic consumes resources such as bandwidth, memory, or processing power, leading to performance degradation or complete unavailability of the service.

DoS attacks can take various forms, including volumetric attacks that generate massive amounts of traffic or application-layer attacks that exploit specific vulnerabilities in a web application. The main goal is to disrupt normal operations and can be targeted at websites, servers, or network infrastructure, resulting in lost productivity, revenue, and trust from users.

In contrast, phishing involves tricking individuals into providing sensitive information, man-in-the-middle attacks intercept communications between two parties, and SQL injection targets databases by inserting malicious SQL code. These do not specifically focus on overwhelming a service to cause disruption, distinguishing them from DoS attacks.