Which technique is used to control the rate of outbound or inbound traffic to mitigate DDoS?

• A. Rate limiting
• B. KFSensor
• C. Load Balancing
• D. Throttling

Answer: (A)

Controlling how fast traffic can flow to a service is achieved through rate limiting. By setting maximum allowed requests per second (or per minute) from a given source or for a particular endpoint, the system can drop or delay excess traffic once that cap is reached. This directly limits the workload an attacker can impose, helping to keep the service responsive during a flood. Implementations often use mechanisms like token buckets or leaky buckets to smooth bursts and are typically applied at edge devices, gateways, or CDNs so malicious traffic is curtailed before it reaches internal resources.

KFSensor is a honeypot-style tool that simulates a vulnerable service to attract attackers, not a method for controlling traffic rates. Load balancing spreads requests across multiple servers to improve availability and capacity, but it doesn’t enforce explicit rate caps on inbound traffic. Throttling is a related concept that slows down traffic, but the standard term used for mitigating DDoS by enforcing explicit caps is rate limiting.