Degradation of Service Attack

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What Does Degradation of Service Attack Mean?

A degradation of service attack is a type of denial of service (DoS) attack geared toward disrupting the service, speed and response time of a network or website. It is designed to degrade services of a target to its point before becoming partially or permanently unavailable.

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Techopedia Explains Degradation of Service Attack

A degradation of service attack is basically a DoS attack with slightly less intensity and severity. Like a DoS attack, a degradation of service attack works by employing a series of remote zombie or compromised computers that are infected with malware or a virus. These zombie computers simultaneously send a network/service request to the target system or website with the intention of slowing it down. Once successfully initiated, a degraded website or system becomes highly prone to a DoS attack.

Further, some hackers, malicious activists and even network/security administrators use degradation of service attacks to check or test the strength of a website/system against a full scale DoS attack.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.