The First Documented Denial-of-Service Attacks Occur

2/7/2000
A diagram of a Denial-of-Service Attack.

A diagram of a Denial-of-Service Attack.

During the week of February 7, 2000 massive denial-of-service attacks (DoS attacks, or distributed denial of service DDoS attacks) were launched against major websites, including Yahoo!, Amazon and eBay. These attacks used computers at multiple locations to overwhelm the vendors’ computers and shut down their websites. They are the first documented massive DDoS attacks.

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