Support »
A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is like someone deliberately clogging up a service so normal people can't use it.
Imagine a restaurant with one waiter. Normally, customers come in, order food, and get served.
A DoS attack is like 1,000 fake customers calling the restaurant at the exact same time, pretending to order complicated meals. The waiter gets completely overwhelmed, runs around in circles, and can't serve the real customers who just want a normal dinner. The restaurant is still open — it's just so jammed that real people can't get service.
Websites, servers, or online services have limited "capacity" (like bandwidth, processing power, or memory).
An attacker floods the target with thousands or millions of fake requests or junk data.
The server gets so busy handling the garbage traffic that it slows down dramatically or crashes entirely.
Real users can't load the website, log in, make purchases, etc.
Attackers took down major websites like Amazon, Netflix, or banks for hours.
Hackers have used DDoS attacks against government websites during conflicts.
Even video games sometimes get hit so players can't log in.
Bottom line: It's not stealing data or breaking into the system — it's just sabotaging availability. The service gets "denied" to the people who actually need it.