Information Security: Denial of Service (Definitions)

"A type of attack on a computer system that ties up critical system resources, making the system temporarily unusable." (Tom Petrocelli, "Data Protection and Information Lifecycle Management", 2005)

"Any attack that affects the availability of a service. Reliability bugs that cause a service to crash or hang are usually potential denial-of-service problems." (Mark S Merkow & Lakshmikanth Raghavan, "Secure and Resilient Software Development", 2010)

"This is a technique for overloading an IT system with a malicious workload, effectively preventing its regular service use." (Martin Oberhofer et al, "The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture", 2010)

"Occurs when a server or Web site receives a flood of traffic - much more traffic or requests for service than it can handle, causing it to crash." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management 8th Ed", 2011)

"Causing an information resource to be partially or completely unable to process requests. This is usually accomplished by flooding the resource with more requests than it can handle, thereby rendering it incapable of providing normal levels of service." (Mark Rhodes-Ousley, "Information Security: The Complete Reference, Second Edition" 2nd Ed., 2013)

"Attacks designed to disable a resource such as a server, network, or any other service provided by the company. If the attack is successful, the resource is no longer available to legitimate users." (Darril Gibson, "Effective Help Desk Specialist Skills", 2014)

"An attack from a single attacker designed to disrupt or disable the services provided by an IT system. Compare to distributed denial of service (DDoS)." (Darril Gibson, "Effective Help Desk Specialist Skills", 2014)

"A coordinated attack in which the target website or service is flooded with requests for access, to the point that it is completely overwhelmed." (Faithe Wempen, "Computing Fundamentals: Introduction to Computers", 2015)

"An attack that can result in decreased availability of the targeted system." (Mike Harwood, "Internet Security: How to Defend Against Attackers on the Web" 2nd Ed., 2015)

"An attack that generally floods a network with traffic. A successful DoS attack renders the network unusable and effectively stops the victim organization’s ability to conduct business." (Weiss, "Auditing IT Infrastructures for Compliance" 2nd Ed., 2015)

"A type of cyberattack to degrade the availability of a target system." (O Sami Saydjari, "Engineering Trustworthy Systems: Get Cybersecurity Design Right the First Time", 2018)

"Any action, or series of actions, that prevents a system, or its resources, from functioning in accordance with its intended purpose." (Shon Harris & Fernando Maymi, "CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide" 8th Ed., 2018)

"The prevention of authorized access to resources or the delaying of time-critical operations." (William Stallings, "Effective Cybersecurity: A Guide to Using Best Practices and Standards", 2018)

"An attack shutting down running of a service or network in order to render it inaccessible to its users (whether human person or a processing device)." (Wissam Abbass et al, "Internet of Things Application for Intelligent Cities: Security Risk Assessment Challenges", 2021)

"Actions that prevent the NE from functioning in accordance with its intended purpose. A piece of equipment or entity may be rendered inoperable or forced to operate in a degraded state; operations that depend on timeliness may be delayed." (NIST SP 800-13)

"The prevention of authorized access to resources or the delaying of time-critical operations. (Time-critical may be milliseconds or it may be hours, depending upon the service provided)." (NIST SP 800-12 Rev. 1)

"The prevention of authorized access to a system resource or the delaying of system operations and functions." (NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 2)