Phishing is a very common form of attack, using using emails. Attackers send emails purporting to be from organisations such as banks and ecommerce sites, with the aim of tricking users in to clicking on the email links and divulging personal information, especially:
Usernames
Passwords
Credit / Debit card information
Social engineering covers a wide range of attacks where people are tricked in to divulging personal information or harming /compromising a system.
This is useful again systems where either the website / system allows unlimited login attempts. The attacker keeps trying every possible password combination until they are successful. This form of attack is usually combined with a dictionary attack and is especially effective where short or common passwords are used (e.g. password123)
Activity
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Often an objective of attackers is to shut down a webserver or website. A simple way of achieving this is to overload the site with thousands and thousands of requests for data. The server is overloaded with requests and it crashes. This is known as a Denial Of Service Attack.(DOS)
In order to defend attack such an attack, webservers often block requests from an IP address if it starts to send too many requests. The only way to circumvent this defence is to attack the server from many machines, in many locations at once. This can only be achieved if you first find a vulnerability in client computers (or more recently Internet Connected Devices like webcams, Network Attached Storage, Smart devices). You take control of these devices and turn them in to a large BOTNET, getting thousands or millions of hacked devices to send requests to the intended target. This type of attack of known as a Distributed Denial of Service Attack.
With the widespread adoption of WIFI in offices around the world, data interception has become widespread. Encrypted packets can be sniffed, and given enough packets and time, the WIFI encryption key can be computed and access to the network can be obtained. This is especially effective against older, weaker encryption technologies, for example WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
An SQL Injection works by taking advantage of poor programming discipline while programming using SQL databases.
If user inputs are not sanitized (checked to make sure no illegal input has been entered) before processing, then an attacker can inject their own SQL statements in to the system.
Weak Python/SQL Code Example
fname = input(“What’s you first name?”)
lname = input(“What’s your last name?”)
c.execute(“INSERT INTO STUDENTS VALUES(‘”+ fname + “‘,'”+lname+”‘);”)
In the example above the user input on lines 1 and 2 are directed added to the SQL statement using string concatenation, this allows for a possible attack.
Strong Python/SQL Code Example
fname = input(“What’s you first name?”)
lname = input(“What’s your last name?”)
entry = (fname,lname)
c.execute(“INSERT INTO STUDENTS VALUES(?,?);”,entry)
In the example above the user input is first added to a tuple and then passed to execute function as an function parameter. This input is then sanitized internally within the execute function before being passed to the SQL query for processing.
When network administrators set up the network policy, they may implement poor policies which allow attacks by hackers.
Examples include:
Allowing weak passwords
Not compartmentalizing data access