What type of attack could jeopardize an employee's job by linking network activities directly back to that employee?

The correct answer involves a passive attack, which is characterized by monitoring or capturing data without actively interacting with the systems. In a passive attack, the attacker observes and logs network traffic, which can reveal sensitive information about users, including their activities, logins, and communications.

By linking these observations directly to an employee, a passive attack can result in revealing improper activities or vulnerabilities that may put that employee’s position at risk. This type of attack is particularly dangerous because it operates silently, making it difficult for the victim to detect that their activities are being monitored.

In contrast, other types of attacks, such as active attacks or injection attacks, involve more overt actions that disrupt normal operations or corrupt data. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack focuses on overwhelming a network or service, which may cause service interruptions but does not specifically link malicious activities back to an individual employee in a way that endangers their job. Therefore, the nature of a passive attack aligns perfectly with the scenario presented in the question.