Attack that overwhelms a system or network with traffic to make it unavailable to legitimate users.
A Denial of Service (DoS) attack aims to make systems, services, or networks unavailable by overwhelming them with traffic or exploiting vulnerabilities that cause crashes. DoS attacks target availability rather than stealing data—the goal is disruption. Attack methods include flooding with network traffic, sending malformed packets that crash services, or exhausting resources. While single-source DoS attacks are relatively easy to block, distributed attacks (DDoS) from many sources are far more challenging.
Why It Matters
The DSC Perspective:
DoS attacks can take your services offline, disrupting operations and damaging reputation. While complete protection is difficult, DDoS mitigation services, redundancy, and incident response planning reduce impact.