Cyberattacks: Undoubtedly, the internet has driven business growth and Digital Transformation across all sectors. But, this advancement has also been used by cyber criminals and has given rise to various cyber-attacks.
This challenging scenario requires a preventive and strategic posture on the part of the business. For this reason, Information Security plays an ever-increasing role in business planning since the impacts of virtual threats are not limited to financial losses.
What Is A Cyber Attack?
Cybernetic attack, or cyberattack, is the name given to a criminal practice carried out by “hackers” to invade systems, taking over sensitive data and computational assets of third parties to apply blows and obtain illicit advantages.
14 Types Of Highly Dangerous Cyber Attacks
As simple as it may seem, a virtual attack can cause a lot of damage to the business. After all, data is one of today’s most valuable assets — for businesses and consumers alike. So how about getting to know them a little better? Check out the summary we prepared!
Ransomware
Ransomware is a cyber attack that uses cryptography to restrict the victim’s access to information. Thus, invading a system prevents data from being accessed by the owner.
From there, criminals demand a “ransom” to decrypt the information and allow the company to return to normal operations.
As a rule, Ransomware is designed to spread over a network and target databases and file servers. This means that it can quickly and completely paralyze a company’s activities.
Phishing
Phishing is a cyber attack in which a target is contacted via email, phone, SMS or text message. In it, the criminal impersonates someone or some institution to deceive the victim and make them provide sensitive information, such as:
- personal data;
- Bank data;
- access passwords;
- credit card data.
As the victim believes he is providing the information to a legitimate institution, the cybercriminal can access it to apply other scams and appropriate the victim’s resources.
Spoofing
In Spoofing, the cybercriminal takes advantage of the victim’s inattention — one of the home office security mistakes — to hide an email address, a website URL, a display name or a phone number. Thus, he convinces her he is interacting with a legitimate and reliable contact.
This practice usually involves changing simple characters to identify the signer of the message.
Backdoor
Backdoor is a malicious action in which users (authorized and unauthorized) manage to circumvent conventional protection mechanisms. Thus, they have administrator access to systems, networks and applications.
In other words, the criminal manages to circumvent security and gain privileged access to computational resources. In this way, it can get hold of sensitive data and alter and install vulnerabilities in the system.
Trojan Horse
Although it is one of the oldest types of cyber attacks, the Trojan Horse — or Trojan Horse — is still ubiquitous. In this case, the criminal manages to install a threat on the user’s device in a hidden way, along with legitimate software.
Unobtrusively, it gains access to system resources and can capture confidential information. Therefore, we are discussing a simple but highly harmful threat that could be avoided with Endpoint Protection and Data Loss Prevention actions.
Port Scanning Attack
The Port Scanning Attack is a more sophisticated type of attack. It uses malware to perform an internal scan of systems and detect flaws and vulnerabilities in mobile devices, systems and applications that can be exploited.
From this, cybercriminals start to take advantage of security and configuration gaps to access data, capture information and apply other scams.
Zero Day
Essentially, a zero-day vulnerability is an identified but unresolved flaw in a system. The criminal identifies the vulnerability and exploits it before the company takes action.
This type of attack is becoming increasingly fast and sophisticated. In addition, the losses arising from this action may exceed the financial losses since sensitive customer data may be exposed and misused.
Man-In-The-Middle (MITM)
Also known as a spy attack, Man-in-the-middle clarifies the importance of protecting the media. This is because cybercriminals can intercept messages between legitimate users.
In addition to spying on communications, it can fraudulently interact with users. This way, you can easily access confidential information and use it for different purposes.
DoS And DDoS Attacks
The Denial of Service (DoS) attack overloads a server with traffic from a single location. That is, a single computer or machine sends many requests to the server, making it unable to process them and leaving services, sites and resources unavailable.
The Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) is a DoS attack that works in a coordinated manner. Several devices are used to overload a specific resource, causing it to stop.
Password Attack
The Password Attack is characterized by using different software and resources to access and “break” the user’s password.
Interestingly, criminals can start with simple attempts, testing the target’s data, and move on to more robust and agile software. So this is a case where technology is an ally of hackers.
SQL Injection
SQL Injection, or SQL Injection, is commonly applied to database-based websites. In this case, cybercriminals take advantage of the carelessness with the protection of the company’s source code to change it and manipulate queries and information.
Thus, by injecting malicious code, they can view, edit and program the server so that it reveals sensitive information — which can be used to apply other types of scams.
Decoy
In a Decoy attack, the criminal uses a widespread practice: fraud. In this case, a legitimate program is “cloned”, and the user does not realize he is using a fake system.
From there, the criminal can access login data and other sensitive information. Without realizing it, the victim provides everything they need to apply blows and harm the company and its employees – including accessing the natural system.
DNS Spoofing
As the name implies, this cyberattack alters DNS records, redirecting traffic to a fake website. Thus, when entering the fraudulent page, the user can enter confidential information, exposing it to the criminal.
With this data in hand, hackers can make purchases, bank transfers and even access corporate servers, depending on the information they have access to.
Brute Force Attack
The Force Attack is rudimentary and relies on trial-and-error strategies. The name implies malicious software automates discovering victims’ usernames and passwords, doing this several times until successful.
Also Read: Critical Data To Understand Cyber-Attacks