Social Engineering (Phishing)
Phishing is a type of social engineering attack where the attacker deceives the victim into providing sensitive information, such as passwords or credit card numbers, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Denial of Service (DoS), including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
A DoS attack floods a network or server with traffic to overload it and make it unavailable to legitimate users. In a DDoS attack, this traffic comes from multiple, distributed sources, making it more difficult to mitigate.
Back Door
A back door refers to a method of bypassing normal authentication procedures to access a system, often left by the developers (usually by accident) or created by attackers through malware. Once a back door is installed, an attacker can access the system at will.
IP Spoofing
IP spoofing involves an attacker disguising their IP address to make it appear as if the packets they send come from a trusted source, thereby gaining unauthorised access or causing the receiver to misdirect their response.
SQL Injection
SQL injection is an attack on a database-driven website in which the attacker inserts or “injects” malicious SQL code into a query, often via an input field, to manipulate the database, allowing them to access, modify, or delete data.
Example:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = 'user_input';A SQL injection attack may occur if an attacker enters a string like “‘ ‘ OR 1=1” into the username field. If the user input is not properly sanitized, the resulting query becomes:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ' ' OR 1=1;Man-in-the-Middle (MitM)
In a MitM attack, an attacker intercepts communication between two parties without their knowledge and may eavesdrop or modify the data being exchanged. End-to-end encryption mitigates this risk.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
XSS attacks occur when an attacker injects malicious scripts into content from otherwise trusted websites. This exploits the trust a user has for the website, potentially leading to data theft or other malicious activities such as virus infection.
Types of Malware
Malware refers to various malicious software, such as viruses, worms, trojan horses, ransomware, and spyware, designed to infiltrate, damage, or disrupt a computer system.
Physical Network Threats
Physical network threats include any harm that comes from the physical environment, such as natural disasters, theft, vandalism, or unauthorised physical access to network components, which can result in data breaches or network downtime.
Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
Zero-day vulnerabilities are previously undiscovered security flaws in software or hardware that attackers can exploit before developers become aware of the issues and release a fix or patch.