hug of death

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hug of death (plural hugs of death)

1. (Internet slang) An extreme spike in usage of an Internet service that causes an outage of said service.
   • 2021 February 25, Joshua A. T. Fairfield, Runaway Technology: Can Law Keep Up?‎^[1], Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 59:

     But the law of trespass to chattels embeds good intuitions about balancing one person's ownership with another's casual interaction. It is fine if you pet my dog, just don't pet him so much that his hair falls off! It's fine if you link my content, just don't give my server the Internet hug of death.⁴²

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see hug,‎ of,‎ death.

• denial-of-service attack
• screen of death
• slashdot