Common Types Of Cyber Attacks And How To Protect Your Personal Data

Samuel Akpan June 22, 2023

0 371 6 minutes read

Common Types Of Cyber Attacks And How To Protect Your Personal Data: Modern life is much more pleasant thanks to a variety of digital devices and the internet that enables them. Every good item has a negative counterpart, and the modern digital world is no different. Although the internet has improved our lives today, it has also presented a significant challenge to data security. Attacks online result from this. In this post, we’ll talk about the many kinds of cyberattacks and how to avoid them.enoughinfo

What is a Cyber Attack?

We will first guide you through a cyber assault before moving on to the various sorts of cyber attacks. We refer to a cyber attack when a third party gains unauthorized access to a system or network. A hacker or attacker is someone who conducts a cyberattack.

Cyberattacks have a number of detrimental repercussions. When an attack is conducted, it may result in data breaches, which may cause data loss or manipulation. Companies suffer financial losses, a decrease in consumer trust, and reputational harm. We employ cybersecurity to prevent cyberattacks. Network, computer, and their component protection from unwanted digital access is known as cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity has suffered as a result of the COVID-19 incident. The frequency of cyberattacks has significantly increased during the COVID-19 epidemic, according to Interpol and WHO. After learning what a cyber assault is, let’s examine the many sorts of cyberattacks.

Types of cyber attacks

Cyber attacks come in a wide variety and are commonplace today. Knowing the different forms of cyberattacks makes it simpler for us to defend our systems and networks against them. Here, we’ll take a careful look at the top 10 cyber-attacks that, depending on their size, can either harm a person or a major corporation.

Starting with the various categories of cyberattacks on our list:

1. Malware Attack

One of the most typical kinds of cyberattacks is this one. The term “malware” describes harmful software viruses such as worms, spyware, ransomware, adware, and trojans. The trojan infection poses as trustworthy software. Spyware is software that secretly takes all of your private information, whereas Ransomware shuts down access to the network’s essential parts. Adware is software that shows banner ads and other commercial information on a user’s screen.

Malware enters a network by exploiting a weakness. When a person visits a risky link, downloads an email attachment, or uses a pen drive that has been infected.

How to stop a malware attack:

Put antivirus software to use. It can safeguard your machine against infection. Some of the well-known antivirus programs are McAfee Antivirus, Norton Antivirus, and Avast Antivirus.
Employ firewalls. The traffic that could enter your device is filtered by firewalls. The default built-in firewalls for Windows and Mac OS X are referred to as Windows Firewall and Mac Firewall, respectively.
Stay vigilant and refrain from clicking on shady links.
Maintain frequent OS and browser updates.

2. Insider Threat

An internal danger, as the name implies, involves an insider rather than a third party. In this situation, it can be someone who works for the company and is well-versed in its operations. The potential damage from insider threats is enormous. Small organizations are particularly vulnerable to insider threats because their employees frequently have access to sensitive data. There are several causes for this kind of attack, including avarice, malice, and even negligence. Insider threats are tough because they are difficult to foresee.

In order to avoid an insider threat attack:

A strong security awareness culture should exist within organizations.
Depending on their employment functions, companies must restrict personnel access to IT resources.
Employers must teach their staff to recognize insider risks. Employees will be better able to recognize whether a hacker has tampered with or is attempting to misuse the organization’s data as a result.

3. Phishing attack

One of the most prevalent and pervasive forms of cyberattacks is phishing. It is a form of social engineering assault in which the perpetrator poses as a reliable contact and sends the victim phony emails. Unaware of this, the victim opens the email and either opens the attachment or clicks on the malicious link. Attackers are able to access private data and login passwords this way. A phishing assault also allows for the installation of malware.

In order to avoid phishing attacks:

Examine the emails you get carefully. The majority of phishing emails contain serious issues including spelling faults and style differences from those from reliable sources.
Use a toolbar that detects phishing attempts.
Regularly change your passwords.

4. Password Attack

It is a type of attack where a hacker uses software and password-cracking tools like Aircrack, Cain, Abel, John the Ripper, Hashcat, etc. to decipher your password. Password assaults can take many different forms, including dictionary attacks, brute force attacks, and keylogger attacks.

In order to avoid password attacks:

Make your passwords strong alphanumerics with unusual characters.
Avoid using the same password across several accounts or websites.
Update your passwords to reduce the risk of a password attack.
Keep any password suggestions hidden from view.

5. Attack by Man-in-the-Middle

An eavesdropping assault is often referred to as a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM). In this attack, the attacker hijacks the session between a client and host by interfering with a two-party communication. Hackers steal and alter data in this way. The client-server communication has been disabled, as can be seen here, and the communication channel now passes through the hacker.

By doing the actions listed below, MITM attacks can be avoided:

Pay attention to the website’s security while you use it. Utilize encryption on your hardware.
Avoid utilizing open WiFi networks.

6. SQL Injection Attack

When a hacker modifies a typical SQL query on a database-driven website, it results in a Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attack. It is spread by inserting malicious code into a search box on a vulnerable website, forcing the server to divulge vital information. This gives the attacker access to read, modify, and remove databases’ tables. Through this, attackers may also obtain administrative rights.Common Types Of Cyber Attacks And How To Protect Your Personal Data

Defend against a SQL injection attack by:
Utilize an intrusion detection system, as they are made to identify unauthorized network access.
Validate the information that the user has provided. By using a validation procedure, it controls user input.

7. Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking is a phrase that has a lot to do with cryptocurrencies. When hackers get access to another person’s computer to mine cryptocurrencies, this is known as cryptojacking. By infecting a website or tricking the user into clicking on a malicious link, access is achieved. For this, they also employ JavaScript-coded internet advertisements. Since the Crypto mining code operates in the background, the only indication that a victim might see is a delay in execution.

By taking the actions listed below, cryptojacking can be avoided:

Update all of your security software and programs since cryptojacking may infect even the least secure computers.
Provide staff with training on cryptojacking awareness; this will enable them to recognize dangers.
Install an ad blocker since advertising are the main source of scripts used for cryptojacking. have additional extensions like MinerBlock, which is used to recognize and stop scripts that mine for cryptocurrency.

8. Denial-of-Service Attack

A Denial-of-Service Attack poses a serious risk to businesses. Attackers target systems, servers, or networks in this case and bombard them with traffic to deplete their bandwidth and resources. When this occurs, the servers get overburdened with serving incoming requests, which causes the website it hosts to either go down or slow down. The valid service requests go neglected as a result.

When attackers employ several hacked systems to initiate this assault, it is sometimes referred to as a DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack.

How to stop a DDoS attack:

Analyze the traffic to find malicious traffic.
Recognize the warning signals, such as network lag and sporadic website outages. In such situations, the organization needs to act right away.
Make sure your team and data center are prepared to manage a DDoS assault by creating an incident response strategy, keeping a checklist, and more.
Contract with cloud-based service providers to prevent DDoS.

9. Brute Force Attack

A hacker can get access to a system without authorization by trying multiple passwords until they find the right one. It has a great deal of potential against weak passwords.

10. Web Attacks

Uses cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and file inclusion to attack websites.

11. Trojan Horses

malware that has harmful code yet presents as a trustworthy software. Once installed, it has the ability to carry out nefarious deeds including stealing data and taking over the machine.

Conclusion

Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly common in today’s digital age, and it is important to understand the common types of cyber attacks in order to protect your personal data. Some common types of cyber attacks include phishing attacks, malware attacks, DDoS attacks, and ransomware attacks.

Phishing attacks involve fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information such as passwords, credit card details, or personal information by posing as a legitimate entity. To protect yourself from phishing attacks, it is important to be cautious!