Types of Computer Attacks
Types of Computer Attacks
Types of Computer Attacks
Introduction
Computer attacks, in which hackers gain unauthorized access to or control over a computer, take a variety of forms. It is clear that we must increase our efforts to secure our systems and mitigate crime in the relatively new medium of cyberspace. In order to prevent attacks in cyberspace, systems administrators need a high-level understanding of the methods attackers use to penetrate computers. You cannot effectively fight a war without some knowledge of the weapons of your enemy.
1. Remote Penetration: Programs that go out on the Internet (or network) and gain unauthorized control of a computer 2. Local Penetration: Programs that gain unauthorized access to the computer on which they are run 3. Remote Denial of Service: Programs that go out on the Internet (or network) and shut down another computer or a service provided by that computer 4. Local Denial of Service: Programs that shut down the computer on which they are run 5. Network Scanners: Programs that map out a network to figure out which computers and services are available to be exploited 7. Password Crackers: Programs that discover easy-to-guess passwords in encrypted password files. Computers can now guess passwords so quickly that many seemingly complex passwords can be guessed.
Computer Attacks
Viruses
A computer virus is a program, a block of executable code, which attach itself to, overwrite or otherwise replace another program in order to reproduce itself without a knowledge of a PC user. There are a couple of different types of computer viruses: boot sector viruses, parasitic viruses, multi-partite viruses, companion viruses, link viruses and macro viruses. These classifications take into account the different ways in which the virus can infect different parts of a system. The manner in which each of these types operates has one thing in common: any virus has to be executed in order to operate. Most viruses are pretty harmless. The user might not even notice the virus for years. Sometimes viruses might cause random damage to data files and over a long period they might destroy files and disks. Even benign viruses cause damage by occupying disk space and main memory, by using up CPU processing time. There is also the time and expense wasted in detecting and removing viruses.
Trojan
A Trojan Horse is a program that does something else that the user thought it would do. It is mostly done to someone on purpose. The Trojan Horses are usually masked so that they look interesting, for example a saxophone.wav file that interests a person collecting sound samples of instruments. A Trojan Horse differs from a destructive virus in that it doesn't reproduce. There has been a password trojan out in AOL land (the American On Line). Password30 and Pasword50 which some people thought were wav. files, but they were disguised and people did not know that they had the trojan in their systems until they tried to change their passwords. According to an administrator of AOL, the Trojan steals passwords and sends an E-mail to the hackers fake name and then the hacker has your account in his hands.
Worms
A worm is a program which spreads usually over network connections. Unlike a virus which attach itself to a host program, worms always need a host program to spread. In practice, worms are not normally associated with one person computer systems. They are mostly found in multi-user systems such as Unix environments. A classic example of a worm is Robert Morrisis Internet-worm 1988.
Solutions
How to deal with viruses What are the signs of viruses A computer virus can cause unusual screen displays, or messages - but most don't do that. A virus may slow the operation of the computer - but many times that doesn't happen. Even longer disk activity, or strange hardware behavior can be caused by legitimate software, harmless "prank" programs, or by hardware faults. A virus may cause a drive to be accessed unexpectedly and the drive light to go on but legitimate programs can do that also. In short, observing "something funny" and blaming it on a computer virus is less productive than scanning regularly for potential viruses, and not scanning, because "everything is running OK" is equally inadvisable.
Conclusions
From the above seminar we can conclude that There are various types of computer attacks in the world and they are coming up every day. These kind of programs spreads fast because people share so much data, email documents and use the Internet to get documents. Viruses are mostly written for PC-computers. Computer Attacks are not any more something that just programmers and computer specialist have to deal with. Today everyday users have to deal with Computer Attacks.
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