What are Cyber Threats of different types?

A cyber threats or cyber-security threat is a malicious act that generally hunts for damaging data, steal data, or disrupt digital life. The perpetrators of these attacks are organized crime groups, terrorists, industrial spies, unhappy insiders, business competitors, hackers, and Nation states*

(*where a Government  trying to learn other countries’ national secret and critical infrastructure like electrical grids, transportation systems, water treatment facilities, military system etc. of rival country are at risk of high-tech foul play).

The following are ten common types of cyber-attacks with different intents like financial gain, disruption and espionage (including theft of patents, corporate espionage, and state espionage).

Malware: Malware, or malicious software, is any program or file that is specially designed to disrupt damage or gain unauthorised access to a target device or network like corrupting data or taking over a system. The computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and spyware, etc. are the types of malware.

Mobile malware: Mobile malware is malicious software specifically written to attack android mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smart-watches. These types of malware attack are just like other computing hardware. The perpetrators may implant malware in app downloads, mobile websites or phishing emails and text messages. Once compromised the culprits gain personal and financial information, location, etc. of the device user.

Phishing: Phishing is an e-mail borne fraudulent attempt to obtain confidential information from the recipient such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising oneself as a reliable entity or downloading malware by clicking on a hyperlink in the message.

Spear-phishing: Spear-phishing is a fraudulent attempt to steal sensitive information by sending emails ostensibly from a known or trusted sender inducing to reveal confidential account information, credentials or financial information from a specific victim.

‎Man-in-the-middle attack (MitM): A man-in-the-middle attack is a type of cyber-attack where the attacker secretly intercepts into a conversation between two parties, impersonates both parties and gains access to information that the two parties were trying to send to each other. A MitM attack might be used in the military to confuse an enemy.

Trojan: A Trojan is a malicious code or software designed by thieves and hackers to gain access to a targeted system and damage, disrupt, steal, or in general inflict some other harmful action on the data or network.

Ransomware: Ransom-ware is a type of malware program that infects, locks or takes control of a system and demands ransom to undo it. The victim may be an individual or business.

Denial-of-Service (DoS): A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is a cyber-attack in which culprits attempt to prevent legitimate users from accessing the service by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet.  In DoS attacks, the attacker achieves this by flooding the target with excessive messages that have invalid return address or sending it information that triggers a crash due to overload of demands.

Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS): The DDoS attack is different from DoS attack. The DoS attack typically uses one computer and one Internet connection to flood a targeted system or resource whereas the DDoS attack uses multiple devices to invoke the functions of target system.

Attacks on IoT Devices: In the Internet of Things (IoT) attacks things like industrial sensors, televisions, cars, and other internet connected devices are vulnerable to multiple types of cyber threats. A new entry points to the network are prime target for malicious actor and therefore posing an increasing security and privacy risk of sensitive data being collected.

Data breach: A data breach occurs when a cybercriminal successfully infiltrates a data source and extracts sensitive, confidential information or otherwise protected data. This can be done physically by accessing a computer or network to steal local files or by remotely bypassing network security. The motive behind data breaches includes collecting personal health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), espionage, trade secrets or intellectual property.

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