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.)

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Example Sentences

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

From Seattle Times

"The analysis shows that it is a denial-of-service attack," a parliament spokesperson said.

From Reuters

Meanwhile, Finland’s parliament said that its website was hit with a so-called denial-of-service attack, which made the site hard to use, with many pages not loading and some functions not available, the Associated Press reported from Helsinki.

From Los Angeles Times

The websites for some major U.S. airports went down early Monday in an apparent coordinated denial-of-service attack, although officials said flights were not affected.

From Seattle Times

“The only way to look at it is as a denial-of-service attack on local government,” said Matt Crain, who leads the Colorado County Clerks Association, using the term for an intentional bombardment of a computer network for the purpose of shutting it down.

From Washington Post