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300-410 Practice Question: Which THREE symptoms indicate a DHCP IPv4…
Which THREE symptoms indicate a DHCP IPv4 starvation attack or address pool exhaustion? (Choose THREE.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests the distinction between DHCP starvation symptoms and unrelated network issues like DAD failures or client CPU load, expecting candidates to recognize that only server-side indicators (pool exhaustion, spoofed MACs, client failure) are valid.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Legitimate clients fail to obtain an IP address via DHCP.
A DHCP starvation attack exhausts the available IP addresses in the pool, preventing legitimate clients from obtaining a lease. When the address pool is fully depleted, the DHCP server cannot respond to new DISCOVER messages, causing clients to fail to acquire an IP address.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Legitimate clients fail to obtain an IP address via DHCP.
Why this is correct
Pool exhaustion prevents new leases for real clients.
- ✓
The DHCP pool shows 100% utilization with many unknown MAC addresses.
Why this is correct
High utilization with fake MACs indicates starvation.
- ✓
The DHCP server's binding table contains a large number of leases from spoofed MAC addresses.
Why this is correct
Attackers generate many fake DHCP requests, filling the binding table.
- ✗
Client devices experience high CPU utilization due to DHCP processing.
Why it's wrong here
High CPU on clients is not a typical symptom; the server may have high CPU.
- ✗
Duplicate IP address detection (DAD) failures are reported on all clients.
Why it's wrong here
DAD failures are not directly caused by DHCP pool exhaustion.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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