Cyber Glossary
Cyberlaw dictionary is an alphabetical reference guide to technical and legal terms related to the Internet. The site you are now browsing contains over 500 definitions of words drawn from Standard Internet English including technical terms and their meanings. Our aim is to explain basic technical jargon of cyberspace to those who are not familiar with its jargon. We've given preference to terms that are widely used, like modem or bandwidth, and to those that describe new concepts specific to the Internet experience such as phishing or sexting.
Denial-of-service attack
A "denial-of-service" attack is used to describe a security breach to a computer system where legitimate users of a service are prevented from being able to use that service as expected. Denial-of-service attacks are typically deliberate, though in some instances may be accidental. Some types of denial-of-service attacks include: attempts to "flood" a network thereby preventing legitimate network traffic; attempts to disrupt connections between two machines thereby preventing access to a service; attempts to prevent a particular individual from accessing a service; and attempts to disrupt service to a specific system or person. Even though denial-of-service attacks do not usually result in the theft of information they can prove to be very costly, particularly in regards to the unplanned down time of the service.
