ICANN Acronyms and Terms

ICANN has hundreds of acronyms and terms, which can be confusing. We created this multilingual tool to help explain what these terms mean and facilitate your work within the ICANN community.

ICANN Acronyms and Terms

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D

  • distributed denial-of-service attack(DDOS attack)

    A malicious activity in which cyberattackers use multiple computers (sometimes thousands) to engage in a synchronized attack on a targeted system. Attackers often launch DDOS attacks from botnets, a collection of malware-infected devices that act in response to commands from a botnet command and control. Like a denial-of-service attack, the attackers overwhelm the targeted system with spurious requests, making the system difficult or impossible for its intended users to reach.