Denial-of-service attack

Topicupdated 2025-11-18 23:24
Denial-of-service attack

A DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack is a type of cyberattack where perpetrators overwhelm a targeted online service, such as a website or network, with a massive flood of internet traffic. This is typically executed using a network of compromised computers, known as a botnet, which simultaneously sends superfluous requests to the target. The objective is to exhaust the target's resources, making it slow, unresponsive, or completely unavailable to legitimate users.

These attacks are notable due to their significant disruptive potential, capable of halting essential online services for businesses, governments, and critical infrastructure. The scale can be immense, with attackers sometimes generating traffic equivalent to millions of users, highlighting vulnerabilities in global internet stability. This makes DDoS a persistent and costly threat in the cybersecurity landscape.

Recently, DDoS attacks have been prominent in news headlines following a major outage affecting a leading internet infrastructure company. The incident, which occurred in late 2025, caused widespread service disruptions, taking down popular platforms and websites for many users globally. This event underscored how reliant the modern internet is on such service providers and demonstrated the real-world impact a large-scale DDoS attack can have.

Concurrently, other major technology firms have reported fending off record-breaking attacks, indicating a trend of increasingly powerful and sophisticated cyber offensives. These incidents collectively emphasize the ongoing arms race between cybercriminals developing new attack methods and security professionals working to bolster defenses for essential online services.

Brief generated by an LLM (DeepSeek) from Wikipedia and recent news headlines.

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