Network Threats Flashcards
What is malware short for?
Malicious software
What is malware a general term for?
For any hostile or intrusive software
What are the 9 types of malware?
Computer Virus Trojan Spyware Adware Pharming Click fraud Ransomware Rootkits Scareware
What threats are labelled as ‘social attacks’?
When hackers try and trick, fool, bribe, or threaten people online
What do all social attacks have in common?
They attack people rather than hardware or software
Give 3 examples of social attacks
Bribing a user into allowing an attacker access to a system
Putting a thumb-drive full of malware somewhere a user might pick it up, and labelling it so that they would want to open it on their system
Phoning up a user at work and convincing them to break policy and give them the information they want directly
What does ‘phishing’ involve?
Sending out e-mails, instant messages, or phone calls pretending to be someone in authority. The attacker then uses that fake authority to convince users to voluntarily give up sensitive information such as passwords, bank account details
What is the most common method of phishing?
By email
What is a ‘brute force’ attack?
When a computer program is written to go through every possible combination of letters (and / or symbols) until the right one comes up to guess a user password
How can ‘brute force’ attacks be stopped?
By limiting the number of attempts a user can have at logging in within a certain time period
What is a ‘dictionary’ attack?
Where all the words of the most popular languages are used before brute force is tried to guess a password
What is denial of service?
A method of preventing legitimate users from connecting to a server. Web sites can be blocked with this method
How does denial of service work?
It works by flooding the targeted server with millions of bogus requests. There are so many requests that all the server memory and CPU cycles are used up and the server then crashes
What does a denial of service attack often involve?
Hundreds or thousands of computers which have been infected with botnet malware
What happens in a ‘Distributed Denial of Service’ attack?
Each machine sends a stream of bogus requests. The legitimate owner of the infected computers are unaware that their machine is being used in this way
