DDoS

abbreviation or noun

ˈdē-ˌdäs How to pronounce DDoS (audio)
ˌdē-ˌdē-ˌō-ˈes
: distributed denial of service
In the last couple of days they've launched DDoSes on the Web sites of Visa, MasterCard, and various other entities …Farhad Manjoo
a DDoS attack

Examples of DDoS in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Up to now, most of Anonymous’ DDoS attacks have been symbolic. Yochai Benkler, Foreign Affairs, 4 Apr. 2012 Most types of malware want to use your computer's resources, whether for mining bitcoins, launching DDoS attacks, or stealing your personal data. PCMAG, 14 June 2024 OpenAI later revealed that the November outage was related to a DDoS attack. Tom Warren, The Verge, 4 June 2024 Ultimately, the law is looking to prevent incidents like the Mirai botnet DDoS attack in 2016, which used a short list of 62 common default usernames and passwords to scan for vulnerable devices and ensnared nearly 300,000 devices. Joe Hindy, PCMAG, 30 Apr. 2024 According to Avira, this means that when the VPN is active, your computer won't be roped into being part of a botnet and sent off to DDoS a website or send oodles of spam. PCMAG, 15 Apr. 2024 In February, Cloudflare blocked an application-level DDoS that reached 71 million requests per second. Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 13 Oct. 2023 OpenAI was in recent days hit by a DDoS attack that also contributed to a less-than-great experience for some users. David Meyer, Fortune, 15 Nov. 2023 Though the string of recent DDoS attacks on Google, Cloudflare, Microsoft, and Amazon raised the alarm for being so large, the companies were ultimately able to repel the attacks, which didn't cause lasting damage. Lily Hay Newman, WIRED, 13 Oct. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'DDoS.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

2000, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of DDoS was in 2000

Dictionary Entries Near DDoS

Cite this Entry

“DDoS.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/DDoS. Accessed 4 Jul. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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