Cyber Security Threats Everyone Should Be Aware Of

Cyber Security Threats.

The continuous evolution of any technology is often accompanied by the greater risks associated with it. The same happened on the Internet as well. It has been a boon for every existing technology. Manual working has been greatly reduced with the automation brought about with the internet. But the Cyber Security threats that are rising with it are certainly impossible to eliminate completely.

Inefficient implementation of security protocols leads to cyber security threats. Unawareness of employees about security practices also poses a great risk for entire organizational security.

In this article, we will be discussing Top 10 Cyber Security Threats that any organization must be aware of.

Cyber Security Threats

1. Ransomware
2. Phishing
3. Denial of Service.
4. Man in Middle
5. Malware attack
6. Social Engineering
7. XSS
8. Spamming
9. Spoofing
10. Zero-Day Attack

1.) Ransomware

Threat:

This is a major threat to any organization in the current scenario. In this type of ‘cyber security threats’ attack, the attacker breaks into the system of target organization by using any vulnerability in-network and “Encrypts” all the data on it into the non-readable format, leaving a ransom message in plain text.

There are multiple encryption techniques available; hence organization literally cannot figure out the encryption algorithm and so the corresponding decryption key as well.

An organization cannot afford to lose all the data; hence they have to pay the ransom in order to get the decryption key from attackers.

This attack is done to extract money from any organization. This way with the efficient use of cryptography, an attacker can get a good amount of money as Ransom.

Vulnerability:

It is caused due to improper configuration of the firewall due to which malware enters into the system. It can be also caused due to any employee downloading the malicious program file and running it on the client system.

2.) Phishing

Threat:

In this type of ‘cyber security threats’ attack, attacker poses as a trustworthy source to send emails to any employee of an organization that contains some forged link. When the user clicks on such a link, it diverts them to any malicious website.

As email seems to be coming from a trusted source, the employee is more likely to enter the personal details and credentials on such websites.

Now, the attacker has access to one of the employee’s accounts from where he can further work on retrieving the Admin login credentials to execute further attacks.

Vulnerability:

An organization whose employees are less aware of security practices are more at risk of falling prey to such attacks.

3.) Denial of Service (DoS)

Threat:

In this type of ‘cyber security threats’ attack, attackers flood the network with a large number of requests in order to restrict legitimate users from accessing specific services. An attacker sends multiple false requests to the server having an invalid return address.

Hence the server gets involved in processing the false requests and legitimate requests are queued and waited long before execution.

Suppose any marketing organization needs to process at least 1000 users’ requests per minute and on such an organization DoS attack takes place, then it has to bear a huge loss.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is even dangerous as in it the attacker launches the fake requests on the target machine by the number of sources at a time.

This is usually done by using botnets that are remotely controlled by the attacker.  This makes it impossible to eliminate the attack completely from the system and network.

Vulnerability:

If the server is not capable of distinguishing the legitimate and illegitimate requests then it gives attackers an opportunity to launch DoS and DDoS attacks on it.

4.) Man in Middle

Threat:

In this ‘cyber security threats’ attack, the third party gets himself involved in the conversation between two parties in an unauthorized manner, hence called Man in Middle.

Even though two end parties, have a feeling of communicating with only each other, middle man can completely overhear their conversation. This man in the middle has complete information about what they are communicating.

It can also intercept and change the data or even can send his own created message to other parties. The two parties won’t be able to share correct data in case of this attack.

Vulnerability:

If the communication channel lacks the proper encryption techniques for the data sent over the network then Man in Middle can easily read the content of data. If the proper hashing algorithm is not used then it results in breaking the integrity of data.

5.) Malware attack

Threat:

Malware is nothing but a Malicious Software or program that is specially designed to perform execution of certain unauthorized code on the target system. It is one of the ‘cyber security threats’ that can be of various types itself such as Trojan horse, Virus, Worm, etc.

All these malware are designed for certain tasks. To send this malware in the target system, the attacker uses various techniques. This includes sending a spam mail with any attachment which when downloaded, will automatically install the malware in the system.

Also, some malware is bound with the applications. Once the user installs that application, malware enters the system. Once they enter into the target system, they start their execution.

It includes information gathering, file corruption, log file deletion and slowing down the system. These are hard to find and their self-replicating power makes them impossible to be eliminated completely from the infected system.

Vulnerability:

Misconfigured firewalls, the absence of strong Antivirus programs and lack of knowledge of the ever-evolving malware are the reasons that attackers could install malware on the target system.

6.) Social Engineering

Threat:

It is something that is purely based on the intelligence of the human brain. In this ‘cyber security threats’ attack, the attacker tries to manipulate the target person in order to trick him and retrieve his personal information.

If that person is an employee of an organization then an attacker could possibly trick him to get his login credentials.

Furthermore, he could also trick him to install certain malware in his organization’s system, through which he can launch certain attacks in that organization.

Vulnerability:

In this case, vulnerability is definitely the user’s self-awareness. The user must distinguish between genuine people and attackers.

7.) XSS

Threat:

In this type of ‘cyber security threats’ attack, an attacker injects some malicious scripts into the trusted websites. These scripts are sent to certain users within the web application.

On the browser of the user, these scripts are then executed and the attacker will ultimately achieve the result he wants after the execution is completed.

These scripts can access session tokens, active cookies and also the saved passwords. It can also rewrite the content of the HTML page.

Vulnerability:

If the code of web application is not secure then your web application is at risk for XSS attack. One can easily detect it by using tools such as Nikto, Nessus.

8.) Spamming

Threat:

E-mail spam has risen as a great security threat for organizations as well as individuals. It is nothing but sending of unsolicited advertising or other messages to a large number of recipients at a time.

People use this type of cyber security threats to deliver most of the malware. Once you click on any advertising link, the malware associated with it will be secretly installed in the background and will start its execution.

Generally, the people prefer spamming attack because, from a single point of delivery, the attacker is able to reach the system of thousands of users.

Vulnerability:

Employee or user’s awareness again plays a major role in a spamming attack. Users must understand which are the spam messages and should not open them or click on any link.

9.) Spoofing

Threat:

Spoofing is Masking someone others identity. IP Address spoofing, ARP spoofing, DNS Server spoofing are the various types of spoofing options available for the attackers. 

IP spoofing is used to launch Dos attack to overload any network, as server thought of the requests are coming from legitimate source as IP address is spoofed to be a legitimate one.

ARP spoofing is used to redirect the data that is intended for the Host’s IP address to the attacker’s IP address. In the case of a DNS server spoofing attack, an attacker modifies the DNS server to reroute certain domain names to different servers.

Vulnerability:

The absence of a Packet filter firewall leads to an IP spoofing attack. Similar if Cryptographic network protocols such as TLS, SSH, HTTPS are not used then also network in your organization is vulnerable to a spoofing attack.

10.) Zero-Day Attack

Threat:

When developers develop any software they initially ensure that there should be no vulnerabilities in it.

Sometimes they are unable to detect any vulnerability and attackers spot it, which leads to cyber security threats. Which the attacker now tries to exploits this vulnerability to attack the system.

It is called a “Zero Day” since the attacker releases malware to exploit the vulnerability even before the developer has a chance to create a patch for fixing that vulnerability

Vulnerability:

The improper implementation of SDLC (System Development Life Cycle) leads to vulnerability. The carelessness of the security team while testing of software before releases, also poses a great risk for Zero-Day Attack.