In a typical DoS attack, what resource is commonly overwhelmed by the attacker to disrupt service?

In a typical Denial of Service (DoS) attack, the primary goal is to overwhelm a specific resource so that legitimate users cannot access it. Network bandwidth is a key target in this type of attack because attackers exploit it to flood the network with excessive traffic. By sending a massive amount of data packets over the network, they can saturate the available bandwidth, making it impossible for legitimate traffic to get through. This results in denial of service to the targeted systems or users.

While CPU usage, memory allocation, and disk space can also be targeted in different types of attacks or specific variants of DoS (such as Distributed Denial of Service, DDoS), the most straightforward and common method involves overwhelming network bandwidth. This is often achieved through techniques such as SYN floods, UDP floods, or HTTP request floods, which primarily aim to exhaust the network's capacity.