1.0 - Threats, Attacks and Vulnerabilities Flashcards
What is phishing?
Social engineering with a touch of spoofing. This is used to collect access credentials.
- often delivered by email, text, etc.
What is typosquatting?
A type of trick and misdirection. A type of URL hijacking - https://professormessor.com
prepending: https://pprofessormesser.com
real address:
https://professormesser.com
What is pretexting?
A type of trick and misdirection. Lying to get information
The attacker is a character in a situation that they create
example - “Hi, we’re calling from visa regarding an automated payment to your utility service…”
What is pharming?
Redirection to a legit website to a bogus site that harvests a large group of people (as opposed to an attack directed at a single person). This poisons the DNS server and/or client vulnerabilities.
This typically appears very legitimate and is hard to detect
What is vishing?
(voice phishing) is done over the phone or voicemail
- caller ID spoofing is common
- fake security checks or bank updates
What is smishing?
(SMS phishing) is done by text essage
- spoofing is a problem here as well
- forward links or asks for personal information
What is reconnaissance?
Gathering information on a victim
What is spear phishing?
Targeted phishing with inside information
What is whaling?
Spear phishing the CEO. A targeted phishing with the possibility of a large catch
What is the pretext?
Simply a lie that sets up the scenario for a specific attack. The “trap.”
“Hello sir, my name is Wendy and I’m from Microsoft Windows. This is an urgent check up call for your computer as we have found several problems with it.”
What is impersonation?
Attacker who pretends to be someone they are not. They use the details they gather during reconnaissance. They commonly attack the victim by acting as someone of higher rank and throw around tons of technical details around to confuse the victim.
What is eliciting information?
Extracting information from the victim. Usually the victim doesn’t even know this is happening. Often seen with vishing. These are well documented psychological tricks.
What is identity fraud?
Your identity being used by others
What is dumpster diving?
A mobile garbage bin. People will look through thrown out trash to gather information.
What is shoulder surfing?
Quite simply, looking over your shoulder to access your important information.
What are hoaxes?
A threat that doesn’t actually exist but they seem like they COULD be real
This is often an email
What is a watering hole attack?
This attack relies on the idea of infecting you by use of a third party. This third party is the “watering hole” which is the central place where they’re hoping users will come and take a drink.
What is the difference between pharming and a water hole attack?
Pharming = fake site
Watering hole = compromised site frequented by your target/s.
What is spam?
Unsolicited messages
What is SPIM?
Spam over Instant Messaging
What is a strategy for blocking and/or preventing spam?
Spam filter - Have it filtered at the mail gateway before it goes to your server
How does the mail gateway filter spam?
- Create an “allowed list” which will only receive email from trusted senders
- Most spam is not compliant with SMTP standards so your filter can block anything that is not adhering to these
- rDNS (Reverse DNS) - block emails where the sender’s domain doesn’t match the IP address
- Tarpitting - intentionally slow down the server conversation (they may elect to skip over you to avoid the slowdown)
- Recipient filtering - block all email not addressed to a valid recipient email address
What is an Influence Campaign?
Sway public opinion on political and social issues
What is an example of a influence campaign?
Hybrid Warfare
This is a military strategy. By using the internet to “wage war.” This is often referred to as cyberwarfare.
*** Military’s that use these can influence election or convince people of “fake news”
