What Does Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Mean?

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) is a type of computer attack that uses a number of hosts to overwhelm a server, causing a website to experience a complete system crash.

Techopedia Explains Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)

In a standard DDoS attack, an attacker starts the process by taking advantage of a vulnerability in a computer system. A computer can be infected with some malware that will recruit it into a bot army for use at a later time.