CompTIA CASP+ Practice Test

What type of attack is indicated by an excessive number of SIP INVITE packets in a VoIP network?

1. Man-in-the-middle attack

2. Denial of Service attack

3. Phishing attack

4. Spam attack

The correct answer is: Denial of Service attack

An excessive number of SIP INVITE packets in a VoIP network typically indicates a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. In a DoS attack, the attacker overwhelms the target system with a flood of incoming traffic, with the intent of exhausting resources or making the service unavailable to legitimate users. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is used to initiate and manage communication sessions in VoIP. When a flood of SIP INVITE requests is sent to a server, it can consume significant computing resources, such as CPU and memory, or fill up the session capacity. This can lead to legitimate calls being dropped or delayed, or the VoIP service becoming completely unresponsive. Other attack types listed do not fit this scenario as closely. A Man-in-the-middle attack generally involves intercepting and altering communication between two parties rather than overwhelming a server. Phishing attacks focus on tricking users into revealing sensitive information and are unrelated to network traffic patterns like SIP INVITE packets. Spam attacks, while they can involve sending unwanted communications, usually pertain more to email or messaging systems, rather than the flooding of SIP requests that would be characteristic of a DoS scenario.