Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Practice Test

Which type of attack uses a large number of spoofed MAC addresses to emulate wireless clients?

1. DoS against an access point

2. DoS against a client station

3. chopchop attack

4. Airsnaf attack

The correct answer is: DoS against an access point

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack against an access point is characterized by overwhelming the access point with a flood of requests that may come from a large number of spoofed MAC addresses. This strategy mimics the behavior of multiple wireless clients attempting to connect to the access point, thus overwhelming its capacity to serve legitimate users. The access point becomes congested, and as a result, genuine clients unable to compete for resources may experience degraded performance or total denial of service. In this type of attack, spoofing MAC addresses helps the attacker disguise the source of traffic, making it difficult for the access point to distinguish between legitimate users and attacking entities. This tactic can disrupt the service provided by the access point, which is crucial for wireless connectivity in a network. While the other options may involve different forms of attacks or vulnerabilities, they do not specifically focus on utilizing a multitude of spoofed MAC addresses to emulate wireless clients directed at an access point, which is the definitive characteristic of this type of DoS attack.