Advancements in science and technology have made life richer because people have the internet and the use of a personal computer at their disposal. But every good comes with something bad and this is why people have to face the issue of cyber threats.
The cyber threat is defined as unauthorized access by someone else into your personal information with malicious intent. This mischievous act attempts to hack inside a computer without any permissible authorization and cause severe damage.
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Cyber threats have become very common in this new world where data infiltration, disruption of digital life and infrastructure breaches is the norm of the day. The hacker is equally comfortable hacking inside an individual’s personal computer or multinational organizations. In several cases, even governments have been unable to protect important data and information from hackers.
It is not necessary to have a physical presence to pose a cyber threat. A person can easily gain access to a control system from remote locations with the help of the internet. It is important to create safe-walls or cyber barriers to keep away intruders so that the data is never unprotected.
Keep your anti-virus database and systems updated white list only specific ports you need, make regular back-ups and audit your device regularly for suspicious activity to minimize the cyber threat.
Examples of online cybersecurity threats
Some real examples of cybersecurity threats
User records of nearly 540 million users of Facebook were exposed to the cloud computing service of Amazon in one of the most hyped security breaches.
In the year 2016 information about Russian Threat Group-4127 attacks on the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton was revealed by SecureWorks.
Yahoo was breached by hackers and its customer accounts were breached. The company has been unable to bear the damage to its reputation and is still struggling with it.
Records and data pertaining to 885 million users of First American Corporation were breached and sensitive information pertaining to mortgage, wire transactions, and bank info was leaked.
Types of cyber threats
Cybercrime has been on an increase and the threat is making everyone vulnerable. Some of the common types of cyber threats are as follows
1. Malware attack
Unwanted and malicious software that is installed into a system without consent to breach a network is known as a malware attack. It then disrupts and stops access to key components to obtain data and information by passing it through the hard drive. Some popular malware cyber threats are
File infectors
Macro viruses
Polymorphic viruses
Boot-record infectors
Trojans
Stealth viruses
Worms
Logic bombs
Ransomware
Droppers
Spyware
Adware
2. Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
Denial-of-service attacks and distributed denial-of-service attacks are both caused on the system’s resources so that it fails to react to service requests. The purpose of DoS is not to gain direct benefits but to gain service denial.
In DDoS multiple devices that are already compromised are used to launch the attacks so as to exhaust bandwidth and prevent fulfilling legitimate requests. The numerous types of DoS and DDoS cyber threat attacks are
TCP SYN flood attack
Smurf attack
Teardrop attack
Botnets
Ping of Death attack
3. Phishing and Spear Phishing attacks
Phishing is a popular cyber threat that involves the sending of sham communications via email to steal sensitive information and data or to install malware inside the victim’s device. It looks as if the email has been sent from a trusted source and the potential victim is tricked into either opening the link or downloading it.
One can minimize the risk of Phishing by not opening each email without verifying it first.
In Spear Phishing the attacker conducts research, creates a personalized message and then targets a specific victim. It is hard to identify and defend against Spear Phishing.
4. Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack
In this type of cyber threat, the attacker interrupts the traffic and pilfers the data by popping inside the two-party transaction. It is possible when the network is unsecured or when the device is breached by malware and this leads to leaking of all the information to the visitor. Some common MitM types of cyber threat are
Session hijacking
Replay
IP Spoofing
5. Password attack
In this type of cyber threat, the attacker obtains the user’s password by sniffing the connection so as to acquire an unencrypted password. He can gain access to the password database, make a guess or even use social engineering for his purpose.
It is important to implement a lock-out policy where the account will be automatically locked after two or three tries. Some popular password attacks are
Dictionary attack
Brute-force attack
6. Cross-site scripting (XSS) attack
In this type of cyber threat, malicious JavaScript is injected by the attacker into the website’s database. The attacker can log keystrokes, collect information, capture screenshots and control the device remotely.
7. Drive-by attack
In this type of cyber threat, the malicious script is planted into PHP or HTTP code inside insecure or unprotected websites. The malware is installed either directly into the system or is redirected to a site already controlled by attackers.
In order to keep the threat away, the user must avoid websites that have malicious code. It is important to update your operating systems regularly and avoid unnecessary apps and programs on your device.
8. SQL injection attack
In this type of cyber threat, a malicious code is inserted by the attacker inside a server using SQL so as to gain access to sensitive information from the database. It can read, modify, recover content, issue commands and even execute administration operations on the database.
9. Birthday attack
This type of cyber threat is made against hash algorithms used for verifying the integrity of digital signature, message or software.
10. Eavesdropping attack
This type of cyber attack is conducted by intercepting network traffic to obtain sensitive and confidential information like password or credit/debit card numbers. Some of the eavesdropping attacks are-
Active eavesdropping
Passive eavesdropping
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