A DoS attack or denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users.
Not all service outages, even those that result from malicious activity, are necessarily denial-of-service attacks. Denial-of-service attacks can essentially disable your computer or your network.
The basic types of DoS attack are:
- Consumption of computational resources, such as bandwidth, disk space, or processor time
- Disruption of configuration information, such as routing information.
- Disruption of state information, such as unsolicited resetting of TCP sessions.
- Disruption of physical network components.
- Obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.