Pulsing zombie

A form of DoS attack known as a degradation-of-service attack, as opposed to a denial-of-service attack. Unlike a regular zombie that paralyzes a system by inundating it with a steady stream of attack traffic, the pulsing zombie attacks with irregular small bursts of attack traffic from multiple sources on a single target over an extended period of time. Pulsing zombie attacks are more difficult to detect and trace because since they are slow and gradual they do not immediately appear as malicious.