Introduction to Types of Cyber Attack
A cyber attack is any type of malicious attack which targets computer networks, computer systems, information infrastructures, or personal computer devices, using various methods to alter, steal, or destroy data. There are two types of cyberattacks, such as Active attacks, which attempt to alter system resources or alter the data’s alteration and destruction. A Passive attack attempts to use information from the system but does not affect system resources. Eavesdropping on or monitoring of transmission are examples of passive attacks.
What is a Cyber Attack?
- A cyberattack may be defined as attacking the system available on the Internet to bring loss to the organization or enterprises in any way. The outcome of a cyber attack may be loss of business, loss of reputation, monetary loss, and so on, which can compromise the business anyway.
- Malicious users usually launch the attacks without prior consent from the owner of the system. There are lots of ways through which the attack can be launched. Through the system can be protected from malicious users outside the organization, it has to be protected from the internal malicious users as well.
- The term cyber-attack states the attack that has been launched on the system that is up on the Internet. Based on the way the system has been abused, there are various kinds of cyberattacks that we will see in the next section.
- The system has to be assessed regularly in order to stand strong against attacks. The attacker sometimes attacks other systems to get fame, while sometimes they do it for monetary benefits.
Types of Cyber Attacks
So let’s go and see the Types Of Cyber Attacks available there and have been used very often –
Ransomware attack – Ransomware attack may be defined as the kind of cyber attack in which all the system files get encrypted, and the hacker demands the organization to pay if they want to regain access to those files. Once the system is attacked successfully using this mode of attack, the only option that remains is to pay the hacker who could cost the organization too much. It could be protected using the best defense system and keeping the system assessment frequent.
Man In Middle(MitM) attack – In this attack, the hackers try to catch the information while it is transmitted on the Internet. They try to sniff it and then study the information very carefully to check if it can help to breach the system. To protect your system from this attack, your device’s communication to the server should be encrypted. For instance, if you want to make the client and server communication secure, you can opt for the SSL service. The data which is encrypted using a secure sockets layer is less prone to this kind of attack.
Denial of service attack – It may be defined as the type of cyber attack where a host sends too much requested to the target server so that it could be crashed. The server that cannot handle that many requests stop working for a while and do not allow any user to work with it since everything is restored. In order to protect the server from this attack, the load balancer is used. The load balancer’s role is to support the server while it starts getting too many requests that it cannot handle alone. The extended form of this attack is DDOS(Distributed Denial Of Service), in which so many hosts send a request to the target server where each host sends enough requests to crash the target.
Cross-site scripting attack – Cross-site scripting attack is a kind of cyber attack in which JavaScript is used to exploit the web application. The web application that is vulnerable to this kind of attack could be detected manually by filling and submitting the text fields and checking if they are running proper checks or just letting the script be run without any sanitization. The severity level of this attack is high enough to get some useful information to the hacker. To fight against this attack, the application must always be developed to check the values submitted by the user instead of processing them.
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Phishing attack – It is a very common kind of attack that falls under the category of social engineering. In this attack, the hacker sends the authenticated user a URL of the webpage that looks exactly the same as the legitimate website and tricks the user into submitting their credentials. The hacker used the credentials to get full access to the system and make their desired changes. Some of the websites have developed the system to protect their system from phishing attacks, but one must have to be very careful before submitting their credentials anywhere.
Conclusion
Cyberattack is very common these days, and all the organizations that are managing their public interface web application are the best platform for the attacker to showcase their skills to get some fame or monetary benefit. On the one hand, where it is true that the system is being attacked regularly, several measures have to be considered seriously to protect the systems from getting beached.
There are various applications available in the market based on artificial intelligence and ample power to detect the vulnerability existing in any of the systems. The regular checks in the network make it very secure, and the attacker will find it not that easy to be broken. The domain of cybersecurity is very vast, and one has to be up to date in order to stay strong against the attacks. Every day the organizations are moving ahead in terms of cyber protection, and behind that, cyber professionals play a vital role and get good opportunities these days.
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