ITPEC FE Morning April 2020 Question 38
ITPEC FE Morning April 2020 — Question 38 of 80
DHCP Starvation Attack — an attacker floods the DHCP server with fake requests to exhaust the IP address pool.
How it works:
- Attacker sends massive number of DHCP Discover messages with spoofed MAC addresses
- Each request leases a different IP from the pool
- Pool gets fully exhausted → legitimate clients cannot obtain IP addresses
Why not others:
- (a) DHCP MAC filtering — a defensive mechanism, not an attack; filters clients by MAC address
- (b) DHCP snooping — a defensive feature on switches; blocks untrusted DHCP messages
- (c) DHCP spoofing — a different attack where attacker sets up a rogue DHCP server to distribute malicious network settings (e.g., fake gateway)
Key distinction: Starvation exhausts the pool; Spoofing impersonates the server.
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