What is a Cyber Attack & Its 9 Types?

A cyber attack is an online attack that targets computer networks, services, websites, cloud Infrastructures, and personal computers. They are illegal attacks done to steal data and get unauthorized access to computer networks. They are mostly done on large-scale applications to get access to them and breach their data.

How much damage does a Cyber Attack do?

Some of the reports said that 53% of Cyberattacks had done damage of $500,000 to businesses.

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Types of Cyber Attacks

Hackers do many types of cyber attacks. They try every possible attack on a server or network to hack it. Below we are going to discuss some of the common cyber attacks.

#1. Malware Attacks

In this type of attack, the software developed with malicious code, usually installed on a network. Malware software includes spyware, ransomware, viruses, and worms. Can use them to get access to a computer network and run malicious commands in it.

#2. Phishing Attacks

Phishing attacks are made on the person for getting access to their online accounts. These accounts can be Gmail, Facebook, and other social media account. In this attack, a very similar-looking login page was developed on several social media websites. Then this login page is sent to the victim, and if the victim enters their login credentials, then it will automatically be sent to the hacker.

#3. Man, In the Middle

In man, a middle attack, the attacker inserts himself in the middle and executes the attack. Like a hacker can interrupt traffic from a network, he can filter or steal it. The most common example of a man-in-the-middle attack is hacking an unsecured Wi-Fi network. Unsecured public WiFi and hackers interrupt their traffic and steal important information from users connected to that Wi-Fi network.

#4. Denial of Services

In the Daniel of service attack, an attacker stands a very large amount of traffic to a system or server so that the server can crash. Once the server or network is crashing, the attacker can start hacking it.  Attackers use a technique in which a tremendous amount of traffic is sent, to the network in significantly less time to exceed its bandwidth and server crash. When the server crashes, the network gets offline, and attackers can start searching for security holes.

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#5. SQL Injections

SQL is a database used by many web applications and websites. In SQL attacks, a hacker gets access to the SQL database, and it is very dangerous. Suppose a hacker had gained access to the SQL database of a website, then he will be able to see the passwords of the admin as well as users. It means that we have complete access to that website or web app’s backend.

#6. Zero-Day Exploit

A website on the dark web, known as zero-day. Zero-day is a social network for hackers. Zero-day contains hacking instructions for several applications, hacked by other hackers, and posted on zero-day. They are freely available on the zero-day website, and anyone can see how to hack that specific application on zero-day. These types of attacks, known as zero-days, and developers have to fix them as soon as possible.

#7. DNS Hacking

In DNS hacking, the domain name servers of a website, hacked and modified to redirected traffic to a specific website. The website can be of anything, including malware and phishing pages. For example, if there is a website with a domain, www.mydomain.com and hackers hack this website’s DNS server and send traffic to www.hackersdomain.com. Whenever anyone visits www.mydomain.com, will redirect to www.hackersdomain.com without his permission.

#8. XSS Attacks

XXS Attacks, better known as cross-site scripting attacks, are similar to SQL injection attacks. In this attack, some malicious codes, are inserted into a website. While visiting the website, the website generated an automatic malicious code. In the same language, malicious codes execute as the website language. Mostly, XXS attacks, are extracted from JavaScript language. In any browser, JavaScript language is executed. Every browser, whether it is a mobile or computer browser, supports JavaScript execution.

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#9. Brute Force Attacks

Brute force attacks are also very common cyber attacks. In this attack, and hacker tries logging in with several combinations of usernames and passwords. To automate this task, several brute-force tools are available that automatically tries to log in with predefined credentials, and if they are able to log in with some credential, then it will be shown to the user. Additionally, there are several files available on the internet that contain passwords combination. There is a file called rockyou.txt, which contains about 70 Million passwords.

How to Prevent Cyber Attacks

Now you are familiar with several cyber attacks, it’s time to learn how to prevent yourself from cyber attacks. The first thing that you can do is never enter your login details on fake pages. You can check whether the page is fake or not by seeing its URL. You should never download any software from official sources because it might contain malware or spyware.

If you are a business owner, you should hire a good quality cyber security team to prevent your business and service from cyber attacks.

Conclusion

In this post, we discussed what a cyber-attack is and how it damages you financially. Also, we discussed several common cyber attacks that the hacker is doing to hack into computer networks, services, and even someone’s personal life. I hope that this post was helpful and you found this content informative.