Which type of attack takes advantage of programming errors to gain additional privileges on a machine?

The type of attack that exploits programming errors to gain additional privileges on a machine is known as a buffer overflow. This occurs when a program writes more data to a buffer than it can hold, leading to the overflow of adjacent memory. This overflow can overwrite critical control data, such as return addresses or function pointers, allowing an attacker to manipulate the execution flow of a program. By carefully constructing the input data, attackers can execute arbitrary code and escalate their privileges beyond what their user account would typically allow.

Buffer overflows are associated with vulnerabilities in software due to poor coding practices, particularly in languages like C or C++ that do not automatically check the bounds of buffers. Successfully exploiting a buffer overflow can lead to complete control of the affected application or even the entire operating system, depending on the attack's sophistication and the privileges of the vulnerable application.

In contrast, SYN Flood attacks are aimed at overwhelming a target system by using a flood of SYN requests, but they do not exploit programming errors for privilege escalation. Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are similar in that they aim to make resources unavailable to users, rather than exploiting programming errors to gain unauthorized access or elevated permissions. These types of attacks focus