Attack Types Study Set | Sociology 1.2 Terms & Definitions

Malware

includes a wide range of software that has malicious intent. Installed on a system through devious means.

Ransomware

a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.

Trojans

typically looks like something beneficial, but it's actually something malicious. Can come as pirated software, a useful utility, or a game.

Worms

a self-replicating program able to propagate itself across a network, typically having a detrimental effect.

Potentially unwanted programs (PUPs)

Software that cannot definitively be classed as malicious, but may not have been chosen by or wanted by the user.

Fileless virus

a type of malicious software that runs in memory. Some techniques used are memory code injection, script-based techniques, and windows registry manipulation.

Command and Control

A computer controlled by an attacker or cybercriminal which is used to send commands to systems compromised by malware and receive stolen data from a target network

Bots

Software robots that function automatically. A botnet is a group of computers that are joined together. Attackers often use malware to join computers to a botnet, and then use the botnet to launch attacks.

Logic Bombs

A string of code embedded into an application or script that will execute in response to an event.

Spyware

a special class of adware that collects data about the user and transmits it over the Internet without the user's knowledge or permission

Keyloggers

software that tracks or logs the keys struck on your keyboard, typically in a covert manner so that you don't know that your actions are being monitored.

Remote Access Trojan (RATs)

a type of malware that allows attackers to control systems from remote locations. Often delivered by drive-by-downloads or malicious attachments in emails.

Rootkit

A set of programs that enables its user to gain administrator level access to a computer without the end user's consent or knowledge.

Backdoor

provides another way of accessing a system; bypass normal authentication methods; allow attackers to access systems from remote locations

Spraying

A Special type of brute force or dictionary attack designed to avoid being locked out.

Dictionary attack

A type of password attack that automates

password guessing by comparing encrypted passwords against a predetermined list of possible password values.

Brute Force attack

An attack on passwords or encryption that tries every possible password or encryption key.

offline attack

attempts to discover a password from a captured database or a captured packet scan.

Online attack

attempts to discover a password from an online system.

Rainbow table

A table of hash values and their corresponding plaintext values that can be used to look up password values if an attacker is able to steal a system's encrypted password file.

Malicious USB cable

A USB cable embedded with a Wi-Fi controller that can receive commands from a nearby device to send malicious commands to the connected mobile device.

Malicious flash drive

a physical device that contains malicous PDFs, files, etc that could be harmful to your computer, older systems would automatically upload from this physical device without user consent

Card cloning

acquired information from a skimmer that can be made into a duplicate card, most commonly found when duplicating gift cards, can't duplicate chips, only magnetic strips

Skimming

capturing credit card data at the point of sale

Adversarial AI

Attempts to fool AI models by supplying it with deceptive input. When successful it can cause an error or malfunction in the AI model.

Tainted training data for machine learning

Providing bad data to a machine learning algorithm in order to force the algorithm to give inconsistent results

supply chain attacks

An attempt to exploit a weakness/vulnerability in the process that produces a service.

cloud-based vs on-premises attacks

Cloud: Offsite, usually managed by third party, lower cost, no data centers, limited downtime

On-premises attack: On-site, full control of data, system check can occur at anytime, high cost and time consumption

Birthday attack

A type of password attack that exploits weaknesses in the mathematical algorithms used to encrypt passwords, in order to take advantage of the probability of different password inputs producing the same encrypted output.

Collision

When the encrypted hashes of two different strings are the same

downgrade attack

An attack in which the system is forced to abandon the current higher security mode of operation and fall back to implementing an older and less secure mode.