Pulsing Zombie

What Does Pulsing Zombie Mean?

A pulsing zombie is a degradation-of-service attack that occurs when a hacker maliciously targets a system and compromises computer security by sending a steady stream of attacks over a long period of time. Pulsing zombie attacks generally occur without the website users’ knowledge. Although pulsing zombie attacks weaken system performance, they do not shut down systems like with a typical denial-of-service attacks.

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Techopedia Explains Pulsing Zombie

Pulsing zombies are designed to degrade website operations and efficiency. Pulsing zombies intermittently barrage a targeted website with traffic, impacting website performance and creating noticeably compromised user capabilities. Although the individual barrages are short-lived, pulsing zombies slow responsiveness of the target.

They are difficult to disarm because of their potential to continue for long periods of time without detection. In addition, pulsing zombie attacks appear to be benign because they do not inflict catastrophic harm.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…