Cyber Security Flashcards
what is social engineering
art of manipulating or ‘conning’ individuals into giving away private information or login IDs and passwords
phishing is an example of
social engineering
what is phishing
act of sending a malicious email to a target user, with the intent of stealing information from them
what is brute force attack
hacker may go through a list of the most common passwords until access to an account is gained. This is usually automated using common hacking tools.
Alternatively, the attacker may try every combination of characters until the correct password is found. An attacker could try doing this on an email account, a social media account or a standard computer account
what is malware
software that can cause harm to a computer system. Malware is a broad term which can include viruses, trojan horses and spyware. As well as harming computer systems, they also cause significant financial damage, denial of service (DOS) and lack of functionality to key infrastructure.
what is DDoS attack
- A DDoS attack occurs when a number of computer systems – often thousands – suddenly send an incredible amount of internet traffic towards a single server or system.
- When this occurs, the bandwidth available for the target system, as well as system resources like CPU and RAM, become strained.
- When enough traffic is sent to the target system at the same time, the target is knocked offline. It becomes inaccessible to legitimate users because the target cannot cope with the sheer volume of traffic.
why does a DDoS attack occur
including hacktivism , nation-state actors performing attacks on rival countries, or simply a person or group of people doing it for their own personal reasons
what is hacking
gaining access to a computer system without authorisation
what is pharming
- form of fraud, and takes place online through malicious websites posing as legitimate businesses, such as banks.
- The goal of pharming is to trick the user into sharing personal information such as bank details, passwords and email addresses.
- Criminals will then sell this data or use it for identity theft and financial fraud.
- Pharming takes place when a computer is infected with malicious code, which automatically sends the victim to a bogus website through an attack method called DNS poisoning .
what is data interception
malicious attacker intercepts data in transit – when it leaves one system to be transmitted to another system – and uses that data for their own criminal activities, or to perform further attacks
computer virus
attaches itself to other programs (e.g. files) and then making copies of itself to spread from one computer to another. Modifies files and continues to spread.
Types of malware
- computer virus
- ransomware
- trojan
- keyogger/spyware
- adware
- worm
ransomware
prevents you from accessing your device (and the data stored) by encryption
The computer may become locked or the data might be stolen, deleted or encrypted.
Often spread through emails containing malicious attachments or drive-by downloading
trojan
downloads onto a computer but disguised as a legitimate program to get data
Uses social engineering to get the users access password
Trick you into downloading harmful programs
keylogger/spyware
ecords what a person types on a device
Keylogger is put on a computer when user downloads an infected application. Then, it monitors the actions that the user perform
Can be installed through a text message, apps, infected website, etc.
