What is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack intended to affect?

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is specifically designed to disrupt the normal functioning of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming it with a flood of traffic or requests. The primary intent behind such an attack is to make a service unavailable to its intended users. This means that legitimate users are unable to access the service or perform necessary operations, leading to a significant impact on service availability.

While other factors such as system performance may be indirectly affected due to the overwhelming traffic, the crucial aspect of a DoS attack is its focus on rendering services inoperable to users, thus affecting availability directly. User privacy and data confidentiality are generally not the primary targets or outcomes of a DoS attack, making availability the correct focus here.