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Denial of Service

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A Denial of Service, or DoS, is an attack method used to bring down servers and networked machines. In a nutshell, the attack works by flooding a target with an unreasonably large amounts of data packets and requests that the target wouldn't normally receive. The fun begins when the target receives more packets than it can process, and legitimate traffic comes to a halt. A slow/inaccessible server might not be epic for some, but if it's business-oriented, those precious seconds translate to lost profits. Denial of Service attacks are also used to disrupt key communications associated with the target, often disrupting their current operations.

Denial of Service attacks are near-impossible to thwart, making them an effective tool for dealing with internet-based threats. If the target has unlimited bandwidth, one can still cripple the server by creating a massive workload for the server to process. If they manage to block you with a firewall, the firewall itself can become a weak link if it is overrun with spammed packets.

NOTE: The use of the term DoS implies that there is only one entity (single user) conducting the attack. A more effective form of DoS would be a DDoS (see below).

[edit] DDoS

A DDoS attack, short for Distributed Denial of Service. It differs from a DoS attack in the sense that instead of going it alone and attacking a server by yourself (possible if you have faster equipment), you distribute the workload among multiple machines, thus increasing the amount of data you can send which translates into greater damage inflicted. In short, DDoS includes multiple users (human or botnet). This is generally the most common form of DoS.

Rule of thumb: The moar the merriar.