Types of Threats and Attacks denial-of-service (Dos)attack An attack on a Web site in which an attacker uses specialized software to send a flood of data packets to the target computer with the aim of overloading its resources distributed denial-ofservice(DDos)attack a denial-of-service attack in which the attacker gains illegal administrative access to as many computers on the Internet as possible and uses the multiple computers to send a flood of data packets to the target computer Electronic Commerc Prentice Hall 2006 5Electronic Commerce Prentice Hall © 2006 15 Types of Threats and Attacks denial-of-service (DoS) attack An attack on a Web site in which an attacker uses specialized software to send a flood of data packets to the target computer with the aim of overloading its resources distributed denial-ofservice (DDoS) attack A denial-of-service attack in which the attacker gains illegal administrative access to as many computers on the Internet as possible and uses the multiple computers to send a flood of data packets to the target computer