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

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 • Oct. 10, 2022

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 standard denial-of-service attack, the type first encountered as far back as the 1990s, overloads a victim’s system by sending a large number of pings, including connections, requests or other data.

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