Home » Technology » Internet Security » Types of Attacks

Types of Attacks

© Mayur Kamat

So I enter a new phase of discussion. If you have been following me, you already have been through viruses, trojans, password crackers, port scanners, IP sniffers, IP spoofers, etc. So I can safely assume that you have updated your knowledge about Internet security. Today onwards, we look into the types of attacks possible on your network or web server. We try to classify them in order of severity. The type of attack depends on the attacker. It is imperative to know the attacker. So we also try to classify the attackers. Since this knowledge is fundamental and a pre-requisite for the future discussions, I will go a bit slowly in this regard.

What's out there to worry about on the Net? What types of attacks are you likely to face on the Internet, and what types of attackers are likely to be carrying them out? And what about simple accidents or stupidity? In the sections below, we touch on these topics but we don't go into any technical detail; later chapters describe different kinds of attacks in some detail and explain how firewalls can help protect against them.  

Types of Attacks

There are many types of attacks on systems, and many ways of categorizing these attacks. In this section, we break attacks down into three basic categories: intrusion, denial of service, and information theft. We discuss the intrusion part today. The next articles will deal on denial of service (DoS) and info theft.

 Intrusion

The most common attacks on your systems are intrusions; with intrusions, people are actually able to use your computers. Most attackers want to use your computers as if they were legitimate users. 

Attackers have dozens of ways to get access. They range from social engineering attacks (you figure out the name of somebody high up in the company; you call a system administrator, claiming to be that person and claiming to need your password changed right now, so that you can get important work done), to simple guesswork (you try account name and password combinations until one works), to intricate ways to get in without needing to know an account name and password. 

As we describe in this book, firewalls help prevent intrusions in a number of ways. Ideally, they block all ways to get into a system without knowing an account name and password. Properly configured, they reduce the number of accounts accessible from the outside that are therefore vulnerable to guesswork or social engineering. Most people configure their firewalls to use one-time passwords that prevent guessing attacks. Even if you don't use these passwords a firewall will give you a controlled place to log attempts to get into your system, and, in this way, they help you detect guessing attacks.

The copyright of the article Types of Attacks in Internet Security is owned by . Permission to republish Types of Attacks in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.