What is Cyber Attack and How it Works?

 

Any attempt to obtain unauthorised access to a computer, computing system, or computer network with the intention of causing harm is referred to as a cyber attack. The goal of a cyber attack is to disable, disrupt, destroy, or take control of a computer system, as well as to change, block, delete, modify, or steal the data stored on it. 

A cyber attack can be launched by any person or group from any location using one or more different attack tactics.

 

The majority of the time, those who commit cyberattacks are thought of as cybercriminals. They include persons who act alone and use their computer abilities to plan and carry out malicious assaults. They are also frequently referred to as bad actors, threat actors, and hackers. They may also be a part of a criminal organisation that collaborates with other threat actors to identify holes or issues in computer systems, often known as vulnerabilities, which they can then use to their advantage.

 

Cyberattacks are also carried out by organisations of computer professionals funded by the government. They have been accused of assaulting the information technology (IT) infrastructure of other governments as well as non-governmental organisations including companies, charities, and utilities. They have been classified as nation-state attackers.

 

Why do cyber attacks happen?

Cyber attacks are designed to cause damage. They can have various objectives, including the following:

 

monetary gain Most cyberattacks are carried out by cybercriminals with financial gain in mind, especially those that target businesses. These assaults frequently try to steal sensitive information, such employee or consumer credit card details, which hackers can exploit to access money or products using the victims' identities.

 

Other financially driven attacks aim to cripple computer systems by locking them so owners and authorised users cannot access the programmes or information they require. The attackers then demand ransom payments from the targeted companies in order to unlock the locked computers.

Other cyberattacks, which are a contemporary, digital kind of corporate espionage, target proprietary information or other important corporate data.

 

Retaliation and disruption. Attacks are also launched by bad actors with the intention of causing anarchy, confusion, dissatisfaction, or mistrust. They can be doing this to exact revenge for actions that have been made against them. They can want to humiliate the targets in front of the public or harm the organisations' reputations. These assaults can target commercial or nonprofit organisations in addition to the government, which they frequently target.

Some of these attacks are carried out by nation-state attackers. Others, known as hacktivists, might carry out these kinds of attacks as a form of protest against the targeted organisation; the most well-known of these groups is Anonymous, a covert, decentralised network of internationalist activists.

 

Cyberwarfare. Governments all across the world are also participating in cyberattacks, with many accusing or admitting to planning and carrying out attacks against other nations as part of on-going political, economic, and social conflicts. Attacks of this nature fall under the category of cyberwarfare.

How do cyber attacks work?

Depending on whether they are assaulting a targeted or an untargeted entity, threat actors employ a variety of cyberattack strategies.

In an untargeted attack, where the bad guys are attempting to hack into as many systems or devices as they can, they typically search for software code flaws that will allow them to enter without being noticed or stopped. Or they might use a phishing attack, sending out mass emails to a huge number of people with well written socially engineered content designed to persuade readers to click a link that will launch dangerous software.

 

Threat actors target a particular company in a targeted attack, and the strategies they employ depend on the goals of the attack. For instance, the hacktivist collective Anonymous was linked to a 2020 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the website of the Minneapolis Police Department after a Black man passed while while being detained by Minneapolis police. In a targeted attack, hackers may also use spear-phishing operations to target particular people with emails that contain links that, when clicked, download malicious software intended to compromise the company's equipment or the sensitive data it contains.

The software tools that cybercriminals use in their attacks are typically created by them and shared frequently on the so-called dark web.

 

Cyber attacks frequently take place in stages, with the first stage seeing hackers surveying or scanning for vulnerabilities or access points, the second stage seeing them launch the initial compromise, and the third stage seeing them carry out the full attack, which may involve stealing valuable data, taking down the computer systems, or both.

In actuality, it typically takes businesses months to recognise an attack in progress and subsequently to contain it.

 

Organizations with fully implemented artificial intelligence and automation security systems took an average of 181 days to uncover a data breach and another 68 days to contain it, for a total of 249 days, according to IBM's "2022 Cost of a Data Breach" report. While organisations without AI and automation required an average of 235 days to detect a breach and another 88 days to contain it for a total of 323 days, organisations with partially implemented AI and automation took a total of 299 days to identify and contain a breach.

What are the most common types of cyber attacks?

 

Cyber attacks most commonly involve the following:

1.      Malicious software that targets information systems is known as malware. Malware includes programmes like Trojans, spyware, and ransomware. Malware can be used by hackers to steal or covertly copy private information, restrict access to files, interfere with system performance, or even render systems unusable, depending on the sort of malicious code deployed.

2.                  Phishing is when hackers manipulate email messages so that recipients are persuaded to open them. By clicking on an embedded link or an attachment in the email, recipients are tricked into installing the malware. According to Proofpoint, a cybersecurity and compliance business, 83% of survey participants stated their organisation had at least one successful phishing attempt in 2021, an increase of 46% over 2020. Additionally, the survey found that 78% of firms

3.                  SMiShing is an advancement of the text-based phishing assault approach. It is also known as SMS phishing or smishing (technically known as Short Message Service, or SMS). Socially engineered texts are sent by hackers, and when receivers click on them, the texts download malware. Smishing attacks affected 74% of firms in 2021, up from 61% in 2020, according to the Proofpoint research.

4.                  Man-in-the-middle attacks, often known as MitM, take place when attackers covertly stand between two parties, such as a computer user and their financial institutions. This type of assault may be more precisely categorised as a man-in-the-browser attack, monster-in-the-middle attack, or machine-in-the-middle attack depending on the specifics of the attack. Another name for MitM is an eavesdropping attack.

5.                  DDoS take place when hackers bombard an organization's servers with large volumes of simultaneous data requests, thereby making the servers unable to handle any legitimate requests.

6.                  Hackers who use the Structured Query Language programming language to inject malicious code into servers in order to force the server to expose sensitive data are known as SQL injection.

7.                  A zero-day attack occurs when cybercriminals take advantage of a newly discovered IT infrastructure vulnerability. For instance, security teams at firms all across the world scrambled to fix a number of severe vulnerabilities in the Apache Log4j Project, a widely used piece of open source software, after they were made public in December 2021.

8.                  Domain name system (DNS) tunneling is a sophisticated attack in which attackers establish and then use persistently available access -- or a tunnel -- into their targets' systems.

9.                  Drive-by, or drive-by download, occurs when an individual visits a website that, in turn, infects the unsuspecting individual's computer with malware.

10.              Attacks based on credentials occur when hackers take the login information that IT staff members use to access and manage systems, then use that knowledge to break into computers to steal confidential information or otherwise interfere with an organization's operations.

11.              When an attacker attempts to access another system using compromised login information (such an email address and password), this is known as credential stuffing.

12.              Brute-force attacks use trial-and-error techniques to break encryption keys, usernames, and other login information in the hopes that one of the many failed efforts will yield a successful guess.

 

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