Network Threats - Attacks

Question 1

What are the network attacks I have to know about?

Answer 1

• Brute Force Attack
• DDOS
• Packet Sniffing
• Buffer Overflow
• SQL Injection
• Phishing

Question 2

What is a brute force attack?

Answer 2

A simple method of gaining someone’s password. An algorithm which creates various combinations of words and numbers until it gets the password or access key correct. This can also be used on hashed data

Question 3

How can we stop a brute force attack?

Answer 3

• limiting number of login attempts or giving a wait period if amount of max attempts is exceeded
• 2 factor authentication

Question 4

What is a DDOS?

Answer 4

A malicious attack attempting to overwhelm a target or its infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic. This is done by utilising multiple computers systems as a source of data traffic.

Question 5

How can we stop a DDOS?

Answer 5

Servers can use a black hole routing method to drop all network traffic
Servers can alternatively limit the amount of requests over a certain amount of time

Question 6

What is packet sniffing?

Answer 6

A tool to intercept data flowing through a network as packets. A non-filtered network will broadcast data to all nodes. All traffic can be read by computer allowing user to seize everything.

Question 7

How can we stop packet sniffing?

Answer 7

use encryption on sent data

VPN

Question 8

What is a buffer overflow?

Answer 8

an attack allowing a remote user to execute arbitrary code into victims machine. The attacker can gain administrative access to machine and modify or get data. This often happens when an input goes over set limit and data overflows boundaries which leads to data overwrite with malicious code.

Question 9

What is an SQL Injection Attack?

Answer 9

attack used to bypass security measures and access database content, which can be modified,deleted, downloaded etc. This attack is executed by entering a malicious input within a webpage or application, which is executed within the database.

Question 10

How can we stop an SQL injection attack?

Answer 10

• use firewalls
• strong client side validation
• updating and patching regularly
• hash database content

Question 11

What is phishing?

Answer 11

where a target is contacted by mail, SMS or phone by someone posing as a legitimate company or person to lure target into handing over sensitive information.