What is a DDoS Attack? A Simple Definition
Since we’re all about making technical topics simple, let’s start with a basic answer to the question: What does DDoS mean (a.k.a. “What is a distributed denial of service attack”)? As mentioned above, a DDoS attack is a bit like a traffic jam on a website (but it’s intentionally caused by a hacker). Here’s a simple definition for the meaning of DDoS: A DDoS (distributed-denial-of-service) attack is when a hacker makes a website or other service inaccessible by flooding it with requests from many different devices. If you’ve also heard the term “DoS attack,” don’t let that confuse you. A DDoS attack is just a specific type of DoS (denial-of-service) attack — one that uses multiple computers/devices to attack with. How Does a DDoS Attack Work ? Just like a traffic jam floods a highway with more cars than it can handle, a DDoS attack floods a website with more requests (i.e. visitors) than the web server or other related systems can handle. Many hackers use botnets (a.k.a....