What is a DDoS Attack?

A _Distributed Denial of Service_ (or _DDoS_) attack is a malicious attempt to deny legitimate traffic to a targeted server by flooding it with spurious requests. The attacker often accomplishes this by infecting a fleet of servers and internet-connected devices with malware in order to turn them into a _botnet_. This botnet is then instructed by the attacker to repeatedly send requests to the targeted server, overwhelming its available resources. This results in a denial of service to normal traffic.