Information Security: Distributed Denial of Service (Definitions)

"An electronic attack perpetrated by a person who controls legions of hijacked computers. On a single command, the computers simultaneously send packets of data across the Internet at a target computer. The attack is designed to overwhelm the target and stop it from functioning." (Andy Walker, "Absolute Beginner’s Guide To: Security, Spam, Spyware & Viruses", 2005)

"A type of DoS attack in which many (usually thousands or millions) of systems flood the victim with unwanted traffic. Typically perpetrated by networks of zombie Trojans that are woken up specifically for the attack." (Mark Rhodes-Ousley, "Information Security: The Complete Reference" 2nd Ed., 2013)

"A denial of service (DoS) attack that comes from multiple sources at the same time. Attackers often enlist computers into botnets after infecting them with malware. Once infected, the attacker can then direct the infected computers to attack other computers." (Darril Gibson, "Effective Help Desk Specialist Skills", 2014)

"A denial of service technique using numerous hosts to perform the attack. For example, in a network flooding attack, a large number of co-opted computers (e.g., a botnet) send a large volume of spurious network packets to disable a specified target system. See also denial of service; botnet." (O Sami Saydjari, "Engineering Trustworthy Systems: Get Cybersecurity Design Right the First Time", 2018)

"A DoS attack in which multiple systems are used to flood servers with traffic in an attempt to overwhelm available resources (transmission capacity, memory, processing power, and so on), making them unavailable to respond to legitimate users." (William Stallings, "Effective Cybersecurity: A Guide to Using Best Practices and Standards", 2018)

"DDoS stands for distributed denial of service. In this type of an attack, an attacker tends to overwhelm the targeted network in order to make the services unavailable to the intended or legitimate user." (Kirti R Bhatele et al, "The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security", Countering Cyber Attacks and Preserving the Integrity and Availability of Critical Systems, 2019)

"In DDoS attack, the incoming network traffic affects a target (e.g., server) from many different compromised sources. Consequently, online services are unavailable due to the attack. The target's resources are affected with different malicious network-based techniques (e.g., flood of network traffic packets)." (Ana Gavrovska & Andreja Samčović, "Intelligent Automation Using Machine and Deep Learning in Cybersecurity of Industrial IoT", 2020)

"This refers to malicious attacks or threats on computer systems to disrupt or break computing activities so that their access and availability is denied to the consumers of such systems or activities." (Heru Susanto et al, "Data Security for Connected Governments and Organisations: Managing Automation and Artificial Intelligence", 2021)

"A denial of service technique that uses numerous hosts to perform the attack." (CNSSI 4009-2015)

"A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic on a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic." (proofpoint) [source]