To Overcome Hacker Attacks And Hackers’ Attempts To Penetrate Corporate Networks, Companies Must Have A Detailed Understanding Of How To Implement Cyber Attacks. 

Accordingly, it is essential to be familiar with the most critical cyber attacks to know what threats the organization’s communication network faces.

As in the past, hackers did not attack organizational networks for curiosity and fun, but in the form of organized crimes, they attacked private and government institutions to steal their information. While disruption and vandalism to make money are still prevalent, espionage is hackers’ primary goal when shooting infrastructure. Whatever the motivation, security teams have to work hard to keep their IT systems secure.

Cyber ​​attacks are carried out against organizations daily. According to a report published by the security company Checkpoint, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the peak of weekly cyber attacks reached more than 900 attacks on each organization. Meanwhile, in 2021, the US Information Technology Administration announced that 34.9 million records were breached.

Research conducted by RiskIQ Research Institute shows that cybercrimes cause heavy damage to organizations every minute.

While some costs are tangible, on the other hand, some are invisible. In both cases, cyber attacks cause direct loss of assets, reduced revenue, productivity, brand trust, etc.

Statistics show that cybercrime revolves around exploiting vulnerabilities, which is y where security teams are at a disadvantage. They must have detailed information about all entry points into an organization to protect them adequately. Do In a situation where an attacker only needs one weakness or vulnerability to exploit it. This asymmetry is firmly in favor of hackers. As a result, even large companies are forced to monitor the activities carried out on the network around the clock to prevent a decrease in sales, stop business activities by hackers, and ensure that Users and employees can easily access the services they need.

Cybercriminals use any Internet-connected device as a weapon, target, or both. The fact is that small and large organizations are equally exposed to cyber-attacks. The vital principle is to protect corporate networks by applying the best security measures. With this introduction, we introduce 9 of the most destructive cyber attacks.

1. Malware attack

Malware is a term that refers to a malicious program or file that is written to exploit user devices for the benefit of hackers. Today, there are many different types of malware. Still, they all use evasion and obfuscation techniques designed to trick users and bypass security controls into sneaking into a user’s system without their knowledge. Entered or installed on his device. Among the most common types of malware, the following should be mentioned:

• Ransomware: The most frightening form of malware is ransomware. A program designed to encrypt the victim’s files and then demand a ransom to receive the decryption key. 2021 saw an 82% increase in ransomware-related attacks compared to 2020, leading to some of the most significant attacks on critical infrastructure and facilities in history.
• Rootkit: Unlike other malware, a rootkit is a set of software tools used to open a backdoor on a victim’s device, allowing an attacker to install additional malware, such as ransomware and keyloggers, or to control and access other remote machines. Got To avoid detection, rootkits often disable security software. Once a rootkit gains control of a device, it can use it to send spam emails and deploy a network of bots to collect and transmit sensitive data.
• Trojan: A Trojan horse is a program downloaded and installed on a computer that looks harmless but is malicious. Typically, this malware is hidden in a plain-looking email attachment or free download. When a user clicks on an email attachment or downloads a free program, the hidden malware is transferred to the user’s computing device. Once inside, the malicious code executes whatever the attacker designed. Often, this method is the easiest and fastest way to attack systems, and it can also create a backdoor for the hacker to use in future attacks.
• Spyware: Spyware monitors the victim’s Internet activities, steals login information, and tries to gather valuable information about users. Cybercriminals use spyware to obtain credit card numbers, banking information, and passwords. Government agencies in many countries also use spyware. For example, Pegasus spyware was used to spy on activists, politicians, diplomats, bloggers, research labs, and allies.

2. Password attack

Despite many known weaknesses, passwords are cyberspace’s most common authentication method. Obtaining a target’s password is easy to bypass security controls and access critical data and systems. Attackers use a variety of methods to get a user’s password:

• Sweeping search attack: An attacker can try known passwords, such as password123, or passwords based on information gathered from the target’s social media posts, such as a pet’s name, to guess the user’s login credentials through trial and error. In addition, it is possible to use automated tools to crack passwords.
• Dictionary Attack: It is similar to a comprehensive search attack. The above method uses the dictionary to identify the most common words and phrases.
• Social engineering: It is easy for a hacker to personalize an email or message to appear to real users by collecting information about social media posts. These messages, especially if from a fake account known to the user, are sent in hopes of obtaining login credentials.
• Password eavesdropping: A small program is installed on an enterprise system or network to extract usernames and passwords sent across the network in clear text.
• Keylogger: Secretly records every key the user presses to capture PIN codes and other confidential information. This information is sent to the attacker over the Internet.
• Theft or purchase of the password database: Hackers can steal the user information database by breaching the organization’s network defense system to sell the data to others or use it themselves.

A 2022 Identity Defined Security Alliance survey found that nearly 84% of respondents had experienced an identity breach. Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report found that 6,161 percent of all breaches involved misuse of credentials.

3. Ransomware

Ransomware is currently the most prominent type of malware. It is usually installed when a user visits a malicious website or opens a secure email attachment. It exploits device vulnerabilities to encrypt essential files such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF files, databases, and critical system files, rendering them unusable. The attacker then demands a ransom for the decryption key to recover the locked files. The attack may target a critical server or try to install ransomware on other devices connected to the network before enabling the encryption process so that they are all attacked simultaneously. To increase the pressure on victims to pay, attackers often threaten to sell or divulge data mined during the attack if the ransom is not paid.

Everyone is a potential target, from individuals and small businesses to large organizations and government agencies. These attacks can have serious detrimental effects on the victim and his customers. The 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack affected organizations in more than 150 countries. So that the dysfunction of hospitals alone costs about 111 million dollars to the British National Health Service. An attack on meat retailer JBS Foods in 2021 caused meat shortages across the United States. To avoid continued disruption, the company paid an $11 million ransom, while Colonial Pipeline paid a $5 million ransom after a ransomware attack shut down one of them.

4. DDoS

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is when multiple computer systems attack a target, such as a server, website, or another network resource, causing users to lose access to services. Flooding the target system with incoming messages, connection requests, or malformed packets will force it to slow down or even crash and shut down, thereby denying service to legitimate users or systems.

2021 saw the rise of DDoS attacks, many of which disrupted critical infrastructure worldwide. Statistics show that DDoS attacks have increased by 29% compared to the past. Attackers use the power of artificial intelligence to understand what attack techniques work best and direct their botnets to make the slave machines work as they expect. Worryingly, artificial intelligence is used to power all kinds of cyber attacks.

5. Phishing

A phishing attack is a type of scam in which an attacker posing as a legitimate entity such as a bank, tax office, or natural person sends emails to people to get victims to click on malicious links or attachments. These attacks aim to collect valuable information, such as passwords, credit card details, intellectual property, etc. A phishing campaign is easy to set up and surprisingly effective. Phishing attacks can be made through phone calls (voice phishing) and SMS (SMS phishing).

Targeted phishing attacks target specific individuals or companies. Whale attacks are a type of targeted phishing attack that specifically target senior executives of an organization. One whaling kind of attack is based on the business email pattern (BEC), where the attacker targets certain employees who can authorize financial transactions to trick them into sending money to an account controlled by the attacker. can be transferred

6. SQL injection attack

Any database-based website is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. An SQL query is a request to perform some action on the database. In the above episode, hackers send a malicious request to access the data stored in the database to create, modify or delete it, hoping to extract data such as intellectual property and personal information. SQL injection is reported to be the third most dangerous attack in 2022. PrestaShop, an e-commerce software developer whose products are used by about 300,000 online retailers, recently warned its users to immediately migrate to the latest updated version of the company’s software because some earlier versions are vulnerable to SQL injection attacks that enable attackers to steal customer credit card information.

7. Cross-site scripting

Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks occur when a hacker can inject code into a web application in a certain way, and that malicious code is sent to the victim’s browser along with dynamic content. This is another type of injection attack where an attacker injects data, such as a malicious script, into the content of trusted websites. The attack vector above allows the attacker to execute malicious scripts in different languages in the user’s browser, ​​such as JavaScript, Java, Ajax, Flash, and HTML. This attack vector allows a hacker to steal session cookies and allows an attacker to pretend to be a real user while being able to spread malware, deface websites, disrupt social networks, and implement social engineering techniques.

8. Man-in-the-middle attack

In a man-in-the-middle (MiTM) episode, attackers secretly intercept and transmit messages between two parties who believe they communicate directly. Still, the attackers have placed themselves in the middle of online conversation. Attackers can read, copy, or modify messages before sending them to an unsuspecting recipient. A successful MiTM attack can allow hackers to capture or manipulate sensitive personal information such as login credentials, transaction details, and credit card numbers.

9. Interpretation and URL poisoning

An Internet address (URL) is a unique identifier used to locate a resource on the Internet and tells a web browser how and where to retrieve it. It’s easy for hackers to change a web address to try to access information or resources they shouldn’t. For example, if a hacker logs into his account at awebsite.com and can see his account settings at https://www.awebsite.com/acount?user=2748, he can easily redirect this URL to https://www.awebsite.com/acount?user=1733 to see the relevant details. These details include inputs provided by the user.

This attack collects confidential information such as usernames, files, and database data or access to administrative pages used to manage the entire site. If an attacker manages to access the organization’s resources by manipulating the Internet address, he can do various things.