What is the purpose of sending a flood of SYN packets in a network test?

• A. Bypass Detection
• B. Enumerate Services
• C. Trace Route
• D. Overwhelm the Target's Resources

Answer: (D)

The main idea is to exhaust the target’s TCP resources by flooding it with connection initiation attempts. When a server receives a SYN, it reserves state for a potential connection in the backlog while waiting for the rest of the three-way handshake. If a flood delivers lots of SYN packets and the handshake is not completed (or the replies are not followed up), those half-open connections consume memory and processing time. As more SYNs arrive, the backlog fills, legitimate connection attempts get dropped or delayed, and the server can become unresponsive. In this context, the goal of sending a flood of SYN packets is to overwhelm the target’s resources, causing a denial of service.

For context, other options don’t fit the primary purpose: bypassing detection would be about evading security systems, not saturating resources; using SYNs to enumerate services is about probing a few ports to see which respond, not flooding; and trace route uses TTL-limited probes to discover a path, not to exhaust resources.