In this note I have made an attempt to describe and categorise a number of typical cyber security attack methods
social attack types
- Social Engineering: Manipulating individuals into sharing confidential information or performing certain actions.
- Business Email Compromise (BEC): An attack where attackers impersonate executives or employees to trick companies into making unauthorized financial transactions.
- Phishing: An attack that uses deceptive emails, messages, or websites to trick individuals into divulging sensitive information like usernames, passwords, or financial details.
destructive
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS): attacks that overwhelms a website or service with excessive traffic, causing it to become slow or unavailable.
code execution attack
- Malware: Malicious software designed to harm, exploit, or otherwise compromise a device, network, or service.
eavesdropping
- Man In The Middle: the attacker secretly intercepts and possibly alters the communication between two parties.
- Session Hijacking: An attack that involves stealing or predicting a valid session token to gain unauthorized access to a web session.
- DNS Spoofing: An attack where false DNS information is inserted into the cache of a DNS server, redirecting traffic to malicious sites.
application exploitation
- SQL Injection: SQL code is inserted into a query to manipulate a database, allowing unauthorized access to data.
- Code Injection: An attack where an attacker inserts malicious code into a program, which is then executed by the host.
- Zero-day: exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in software before the vendor can issue a patch.
webbased attacks
- Watering hole attack: attacker infects a website frequented by a particular group, aiming to compromise that group.
- Cross-Site Scripting: Injecting malicious scripts into otherwise trusted websites, which get executed in a user’s browser.
- Clickjacking: attacks that tricks users into clicking something different from what they perceive, potentially revealing confidential information or taking control of their device.
- Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF): An attack where a user is tricked into performing actions they didn’t intend to by exploiting their authenticated session with a website.
enumeration
- port scanning: determining which ports on a network host are open and could be receiving or sending data.
- Forced browsing: is an attack where the aim is to enumerate and access resources that are not referenced by the application, but are still accessible.
credentials attacks
- Brute force: attackers attempt to gain access to an account by systematically trying all possible passwords or keys.
- Password Spraying: An attack method where the attacker attempts to access a large number of accounts using a few commonly used passwords.
- Credential Stuffing: Credential stuffing is a cyberattack method in which attackers use lists of compromised user credentials to breach into a system.
advanced attacks over longer period of time
- Advanced Persistent Threat (APT): A prolonged and targeted cyberattack in which an intruder gains access to a network and remains undetected for an extended period.
finding vulnerabilities
- Side-Channel Attack: extract information from a system by analyzing physical phenomena such as timing, power consumption, or electromagnetic leaks.
- Heap Spraying: exploit memory corruption vulnerabilities by flooding the memory with payloads in the hope that the attacker’s code will be executed.
wireless attacks
- Wardriving: attack involving the search for Wi-Fi networks by driving around with a wireless-equipped device.
- Replay Attack: An attack where valid data transmission is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or delayed.