An assault on a network that floods it with so many additional requests that regular traffic is either slowed or completely interrupted. Unlike a virus or worm, which can cause severe damage to databases, a denial of service attack interrupts network service for some period. A distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack uses multiple computers throughout the network that it has previously infected. The computers act as "zombies" and work together to send out bogus messages, thereby increasing the amount of phony traffic. See smurf attack, SYN flood attack, land attack, teardrop attack and Ping of Death.
Hackers Caused a Denial of Service
Computers with high-speed connections to the Internet were hacked and planted with illicit programs that, when activated, sent out an unending number of requests and caused a denial of service at Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon.com and other Web sites during the second week of February 2000. (Article headline courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer.)
Hackers Caused a Denial of Service
Computers with high-speed connections to the Internet were hacked and planted with illicit programs that, when activated, sent out an unending number of requests and caused a denial of service at Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon.com and other Web sites during the second week of February 2000. (Article headline courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer.)
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2009 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- Dark Internet Fundamentals
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- Discussion threads 2009-09-09
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- Feel free to delete this Ryan.ThanksIsn't it about time we stop playing nice andfind these people who create such an endless stream of blank and do a bit of Vlad the Impaler on them? Catch em... give them a fair trial (I want to be certain we publicly impale...
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- Twitter attack: Bots may have been hardest hit
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- Discussion threads 2009-08-06
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- Updated: 22:44 BST. Twitter came under a co-ordinated denial-of-service DOS attack earlier on today which left the site paralysed for a good hour or so. At roughly 7am PST the site was attacked in a co-ordinated fashion, and the entire network was down for at least 30...
- Blog posts 2009-08-06
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- Early this morning it was reported that Twitter had experienced at distributed denial of service DDoS attack that took the site offline for a few hours service has since been restored. During the time rumors floated that Facebook had suffered a similar attack due to slowness in service. ...
- Blog posts 2009-08-06
- Twitter knocked offline by DDoS attack; Koobface returns with a twist
- Popular microblogging service Twitter was knocked offline for an extended period this morning by what appears to be a massive distributed denial-of-service attacks. Twitter confirmed the outage was linked to malicious attackers in a brief status message posted around 11:00 a.m EST. We are...
- Blog posts 2009-08-06
- US cyberwarriors a reluctant crew
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- Discussion threads 2009-08-02
- Using NetFlow Auditor to Assist in Identifying Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks and Other Network Behavior Anomalies
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- White papers 2009-08-01
- DDoS Defense Mechanism by Applying Stamps
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- White papers 2009-08-01
- Apple claims jailbreaking will destroy cell towers
- It's good to know not every scare tactic from the Bush Administration has been eradicated. Things like companies yelling "terrorism" to protect their bottom lines are still in good stead. Everyone who still gets warm fuzzies when they think of Steve Jobs should take a good long read of David...
- Blog posts 2009-07-30
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- Discussion threads 2009-07-29
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