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A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) is malicious attack attempting to disrupt normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilizing multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic. Exploited machines can include computers and other networked resources such as //www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/what-is-a-ddos-attack/