DoS attack

[Usenet,common; note that it's unrelated to DOS as name of an operating system] Abbreviation for Denial-Of-Service attack. This abbreviation is most often used of attempts to shut down newsgroups with floods of {spam}, or to flood network links with large amounts of traffic, or to flood network links with large amounts of traffic, often by abusing network broadcast addresses. Compare {slashdot effect}.

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