Are You Aware Of Cyber Attacks?
Understand the Basics of Cyber Attacks
Hi guys. Welcome to my article about Cyber Attacks. In my previous article, I talked about Cyber Security. Today I am going to talk about Cyber Attacks. Well, you might wonder what does it mean by a cyber attack. Let me ask you a question. Have you installed a virus guard to your PC or Laptop? If so, why have you installed it? Okay, you might have asked this question from yourself now. Of course, the answer is for better protection. In this article I am going to talk about that reason, why do we need to protect ourselves while surfing on the internet and using digital devices. So let us see what does it mean by a cyber attack.
What is a Cyber Attack?
I am sure you have heard this term called cyberattack many times nowadays. So actually what is meant by a cyber attack? According to Wikipedia, Cyberattack is an attempt to expose, alter, disable, destroy, steal, or gain unauthorized access to or make unauthorized use of an asset. In May 2000 the Internet Engineering Task Force has defined attack as an assault on system security that derives from an intelligent threat, i.e., an intelligent act that is a deliberate attempt to evade security services and violate the security policy of a system. Well, you might be a little confused right now. Let me present to you another definition which is given by the Committee on National Security Systems of USA, CNSS instruction №4009 dated 26 April 2010. They define cyber attack as any kind of malicious activity that attempts to collect, disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy information system resources or the information itself.
So in simple terms, a cyber attack can be defined as unauthorized access to steal, alter, disable, or make use of assets that belongs to another person over the internet. Day by day these cyber-attacks have been taking place in the present society. In the 2018 report of the World Economic Forum, they have mentioned that offensive cyber capabilities are developing more rapidly than our ability to deal with hostile incidents. So it is very important to be aware of these cyber attacks in this modern digital era. So I think now you have an idea about what a cyber attack means. These cyber-attacks can be random or targeted. So it’s better to be protected always as we don’t know if we are going to become the next victim of a cyber attack.
Types of Cyber Attacks
I think now you have an idea about what does a cyber attack mean. Now I am going to explain briefly about most common types of cyberattacks. There are many types of cyberattacks all over the world. But in this article, I am going to talk about a few most common ones.
DoS
What does this DoS stand for? DoS stands for the Denial of Service. Now you might wonder what this denial of service means. Well, DoS is one of the most common types of cyberattacks in the modern world. This Denial of Service attacks overwhelms a server with a request for action, thereby rendering it incapable of providing its normal service. Simply this means shutting down a network. There are several types of DoS attacks like TCP SYN flood attack, Teardrop attack, Smurf attack, and Ping-of-death attack.
Man In The Middle (MitM or MITM)
Man In The Middle is also a very common type of cyber attack which is popular these days. MitM attack occurs when an attacker comes between the communication of a client and a server. This means the hacker itself interrupts between the connection which someone is making with the server or an application. By this type of attack, the hacker can gain control of devices. Man In The Middle attack allows the attacker to take control of a device without the users’ knowledge. There are several types of MitM attacks like Session Hijacking, IP spoofing, and Replay.
Phishing
Phishing is a very common type of cyber attack as many people use email as a communication method in the present world as it is very efficient. So you might wonder how this attack is connected with the email. Simply a Phishing attack is a practice of sending malicious emails pretending to be from trusted sources to gain personal information of others or make users do something to full fill their purpose. Well, even you might have received emails seems very suspicious asking you to fill forms by submitting your details or with unwanted attachments. Be careful to not open them. If so you will become one of the victims.
Spear Phishing
This is also the same as phishing attack the difference is that the attackers do a background search about the interests of the victim and then plan very cleverly before sending emails to the victim. Assume that you like cars very much and you searched about cars on google or any other search engine recently. They might do a background search about you and these interests of yours and send emails pretending to be from those interesting websites and make you open those emails. That is the meaning of spear phishing.
Malware
Malware is also a very common type of cyber attack in the modern world. Simply malware can be defined as a code that can be used to steal data, bypass access control, or cause harm to or compromise a system. These malware attacks act by exploiting some known vulnerabilities to install themselves on a computer or perhaps by entering as an attachment to an email. There are several types of malware attacks like Spyware that spy on the user, Bot which is designed to automatically act usually online, Trojan Horse which carries out malicious operations under the guise of the desired operation, etc.
Likewise, there are so many types of cyberattacks in this world. So far I have described what is meant by a cyber attack and gave brief descriptions about some of the most common cyber attacks. Now knowing about these things will not make you safe online. Of course, it is useful to know about these things but we should take precautions when we are living in this digital era. So There are several things we should do to protect ourselves from cyber-attacks. Now I am going to mention some of those things which we should do to stay protected from cyber attacks.
How to Stay Safe from Cyber Attacks
If we want to stay safe from cyber attacks we should use strong passwords. Many people tend to use weak passwords because they cannot remember complex passwords. But if you use a password like 123456789 or abcdefg or princess or some very common password, it is very dangerous cause hackers to know about such common passwords and its easy to guess such passwords. If you can’t remember complex passwords you can use a password manager. Moreover, I know many of you use the same password for everything you use, like social media accounts. But it is not a good thing to do because if a hacker gets to know your password he can access any of your accounts using that password. So we should use different passwords and should change passwords periodically. Another thing is we should keep our software updated. We can also strengthen our home network and manage our social media accounts settings. We should keep the firewalls on and use antivirus and anti-spyware to protect ourselves from cyber-attacks. So these are some of the precautions we can take to stay safe from cyber attacks.
So in this article, I talked about what does a cyber attack means, What are the most common type of cyberattacks, and then finally I gave a brief description about how to stay safe from cyber attack. I hope you guys enjoyed my article and stay tuned for many more interesting articles like this.
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