Methods of Infiltration

Social Engineering

Social engineering is the manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. Social engineers often rely on people’s willingness to be helpful, but they also prey on their weaknesses. For example, an attacker will call an authorized employee with an urgent problem that requires immediate network access and appeal to the employee’s vanity or greed or invoke authority by using name-dropping techniques in order to gain this access.

Denial-of-Service

Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks are a type of network attack that is relatively simple to carry out, even by an unskilled attacker. A DoS attack results in some sort of interruption of network service to users, devices or applications.

Distributed DoS

A Distributed DoS (DDoS) attack is similar to a DoS attack but originates from multiple, coordinated sources. For example:

• An attacker builds a network (botnet) of infected hosts called zombies, which are controlled by handler systems.
• The zombie computers will constantly scan and infect more hosts, creating more and more zombies.
• When ready, the hacker will instruct the handler systems to make the botnet of zombies carry out a DDoS attack.

Botnet

A bot computer is typically infected by visiting an unsafe website or opening an infected email attachment or infected media file. A botnet is a group of bots, connected through the Internet, that can be controlled by a malicious individual or group. It can have tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of bots that are typically controlled through a command and control server.

These bots can be activated to distribute malware, launch DDoS attacks, distribute spam email, or execute brute-force password attacks. Cybercriminals will often rent out botnets to third parties for nefarious purposes.

Many organizations. like Cisco, force network activities through botnet traffic filters to identify any botnet locations.

On-Path Attacks

On-path attackers intercept or modify communications between two devices, such as a web browser and a web server, either to collect information from or to impersonate one of the devices.

This type of attack is also referred to as a man-in-the-middle or man-in-the-mobile attack.

SEO Poisoning

You’ve probably heard of search engine optimization or SEO which, in simple terms, is about improving an organization’s website so that it gains greater visibility in search engine results.

Wi-Fi Password Cracking

You’re enjoying your lunch in the canteen when a colleague approaches you. They seem distressed.

They explain that they can’t seem to connect to the public Wi-Fi on their phone and ask if you have the private Wi-Fi password to hand so that they can check that their phone is working.

How would you respond?

Password Attacks

Entering a username and password is one of the most popular forms of authenticating to a web site. Therefore, uncovering your password is an easy way for cybercriminals to gain access to your most valuable information.

racking Times

It looks as if the hackers are trying everything to crack @Apollo’s private Wi-Fi password. We have to make sure that the password is strong enough to withstand their attack!

Advanced Persistent Threats

Attackers also achieve infiltration through advanced persistent threats (APTs) — a multi-phase, long term, stealthy and advanced operation against a specific target. For these reasons, an individual attacker often lacks the skill set, resources or persistence to perform APTs.

Due to the complexity and the skill level required to carry out such an attack, an APT is usually well-funded and typically targets organizations or nations for business or political reasons.

Its main purpose is to deploy customized malware on one or more of the target’s systems and remain there undetected.