Common Attacks
User-based threats/attacks:
- social engineering i.e.(spam - phishing)
- brute force attacks
- Malware i.e. (trojan horse - spy wares - cookies - viruses - worms)
- Distributed Denial of service (DDOS)
Social Engineering:
phishing scam Depends on cheating users to have sensitive data and exploit the use of it. the attacker sends spam emails to the target asking him to log in by clicking a fake link to enter real creds and the attacker got them already by this step.
the attacker can use brute force by using (software using brute force) which tries every possible combination of letters, numbers, and symbols until reaching the right one suppose for example password : = 4 digits = 10000 combination
Malware
like spyware: it's software watching everything on the victim's device and recognizing information about the person and the device (name, gender, age, country, email address) and afterward, the attacker sends all this data to another organization for illegal reasons.
Cookies: are files related to everyone surfing the web (sites visited - things liked) saved in his device and can be used for advertising or illegal reasons.
Trojan horse: a program in the form of (a game or an image) sent to the user once clicking gets trapped as it opens a back door for the attacker to do whatever he wants in the system(full control).
Virus: is a malware (malicious software) attached with an executable file .exe once this file runs it will start the virus working doing its job (corrupting/destroying files or slowing the system)
worm: can move from one device to another using the network they're connected to.
Virus Vs Worm = worm moves from one device to another virus only on one device they can both
- Steal files from devices
- Change their contents
- Prevent the device from connecting to the network
- Give the attacker remote access to this device
- Fill the network with bad traffic.
Denial of service is just about sending too many requests to handle to one device at the same time until it can't handle it.
distributed DOS more than one device from different places attacks one device at the same time until it can't handle it.
Security Education Users must be well educated as this will:
- prevent users from using personal devices such as flash memory, CD, or AP.
- prevent users from downloading unauthorized software or using websites with cookies
- enable them to use rock-solid password
Technical Solutions
- Using antivirus
- Performing network security scanning