What is the objective of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack?

The primary goal of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack is to make a network resource unavailable to its intended users. This is achieved by overwhelming the targeted resource—such as a server, application, or network with a flood of illegitimate requests—thus disrupting legitimate traffic and making it impossible for authorized users to access the service.

In the context of network security, a successful DoS attack can lead to significant downtime, loss of revenue, and a degradation of reputation for the affected organization. The attack does not enhance security, provide unrestricted access, or monitor traffic flow; rather, it disrupts normal operations and can create serious challenges to maintaining service availability and reliability.