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denial-of-service attack

Cultural  
  1. Often spread by e-mail viruses, these are deliberately planned attacks on a companies or organizations, Web sites, or servers. They aim to shut down access to a site or key server by flooding it with massive requests, placing such great demands on the targeted information infrastructure that no one else can gain access to it. (See cyberwarfare.)


Example Sentences

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Also, a Ukrainian online bank said it fought off a massive distributed denial-of-service attack on Tuesday.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 12, 2023

The websites of various Ukrainian government institutions, including Parliament, the Foreign Ministry and the cabinet of ministers, crashed after a denial-of-service attack.

From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2022

A distributed denial-of-service attack does the same but from different computers or networks acting in concert.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 23, 2022

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian government’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security said that PrivatBank, the nation’s largest commercial bank, was hit with a denial-of-service attack that temporarily interfered with customers’ online banking transactions.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 15, 2022

Other hackers launched a domain name system attack on the website, which one source described as similar to a denial-of-service attack.

From Reuters ● Dec. 4, 2019

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