The Latest Common Cyber Security Threats

Did you know that over 40 million people in the USA have been affected by cybercrime in the last 24 months? High profile attacks have struck even large companies in recent years, leaving smaller businesses wondering how to adequately protect themselves. 

If cyber security threats concern you and your business, what can you do? The first step is to become educated regarding the threats that exist. 

What are the nine most dangerous threats in 2019? Check out our in-depth guide below.

1. Denial-of-service (DoS)

The Denial of service attack is one of the most well-known methods of attack. They are favored because, when well executed, they are devastating. The attack can use many machines as slaves to overwhelm a single system to the point that it cannot respond to service requests. 

DoS attacks are unusual in that they do not provide direct profits or benefit to the attacker. For some attackers, causing damage is the goal. This may be beneficial however if the victim is a competitor or their existence in some way threatens the attacker.  

2. Man-in-the-middle (MitM) Attack

This type of attack is large ins scale and has been internationally deployed. The hacker is able to enter a system and position himself between the client and the server. The attacker then exploits the situation for their own benefit. 

This could happen in the case of a session hijacking attack. The hacker could substitute the client’s IP address for his own. The server may continue to work believing the hacker to be the client. This would give the hacker access to all the information that the client has, with potentially devastating results.  

3. Phishing Attacks

Phishing is the usage of emails that take the appearance of trusted sources to acquire information from users. This is a blend of social engineering and technical resourcefulness. These emails are notoriously difficult to distinguish for many users. 

The email could appear to be from a friend or colleague. However, attached to the email could be malicious code or links to sites with infected pages. The end goal is to extract personal information or passwords from the unwitting user.  

4. Drive-by Attack

Drive-by cyber attacks are usually carried out on a website page itself. Hackers will implant malicious code on a vulnerable website. When the user views the webpage, the code is downloaded onto the user’s machine. In other cases, a pop-up window may contain infected pages or direct the user to an infected site. 

These attacks are dangerous as the user does not have to click, download or install a program to be infected. Simply viewing infected webpages is enough to become affected by the malicious code. 

It is crucial to ensure that websites and their plugins are protected and safe. Professionals such as this service are available to prevent malicious code from being added to WordPress sites. 

5. Password Attack

Passwords are the commonly used form of security to enter restricted systems. We use multiple passwords every day. Hence, weak passwords are a specific target for hackers. 

Hackers try multiple methods to obtain passwords. They try to “sniff”, that means to identify unencrypted passwords. Others use brute force – entering multiple random passwords until the correct is identified. For this reason, some systems will lock you out of a system if you enter an incorrect password multiple times. 

6. SQL Injection Attack

If a website is powered by data in an SQL database, it can become a special target for hackers. Hackers may attempt to attempt to insert malicious SQL code via input data from the client to the server. 

If they are successful they will be able to read, edit and even delete sensitive data from the SQL server.

7. Cross-site Scripting (XSS) Attack

XSS is also launched from a webpage. Often it is a Javascript-based payload that is transmitted to the user’s machine from the webpage. In some cases, a cookie is dispatched from the user’s machine to the hacker. in other cases, the code will sit on the user’s machine and record keystrokes, collect network information and control the user’s machine. 

You may have read about attacks in which the hacker was able to control the user machine and open microphone or camera capabilities The threat that this carries to businesses should not be underestimated. 

8. Eavesdropping Attack

These types of attacks occur through the interception of traffic to and from the user’s machine. By clever interception of cyber traffic, the hacker may be able to obtain passwords, credit card numbers and other confidential information.

The method can be adjusted according to the target. Often the user is not aware that hackers are monitoring them. In other cases, the hacker will play the role of a trustworthy person and launch a stealth attack.

9. Malware attack

Malicious software is one of the most well-known types of attacks. There are many famous examples of malware attacks. 

In its simplest form, malware is code that is downloaded to your machine. This could be in the guise of legitimate code. From the user’s machine it will replicate and look to spread to other users or extract information from the machine it resides in.

An example of Malware is the “Macro” virus. Macros are regularly used in Microsoft applications. However, they can take the form of Malware. The Word or Excel document is opened by the user. The Macro runs upon opening and then transfers to other code in the machine. It essentially installs itself. 

Cyber Security Threats and Much More

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