What is a Cyber Attack?

A cyber attack is the process of stealing a system or person’s information. In cyber attacks, the attackers hack our mobile devices and laptops, or even data present in big organizations. In this article, we will discuss how cyber attacks work and the types of cyber attacks, as well as how to protect ourselves from cyber-attacks. 

What is Cyber Attack?

A cyber attack is an attack where someone steals information related to a computer’s data, or hackers have to disable computers. They have the power to control anyone’s system and steal any type of data. For example, the attackers send an email to a person that contains defective links or files, and if the person opens that line or pdf, the attackers easily steal the person’s information. In that situation, don’t open any email that looks suspicious always check the header of the email.

How Cyber Attack Works?

In a cyber attack, there are two groups present. The first group is untargeted cyber attacks, and the second group is targeted cyber attacks.

• Untargeted Cyber attack: These types of attackers mainly focus on many devices, many users, or many services to steal the data. They are not targeted at a particular person or device. It includes-
  • Phishing: Phishing includes sending emails to a large number of people to steal their bank details or asking that they click the links to go to a fake website.
  • Ransomware: In ransomware, attackers can steal and ransom data. 
  • Scanning: In scanning, the attackers do choose not a specific person; they choose a random person or device.

• Targeted Cyber Attack: As the name says, targeted means they targeted a specific person or specific organization. For example, if someone sends an email to a specific person, they attach malicious software or a link so that the user clicks that link to download the software. In that scenario, the attackers steal the information.

Types of Cyber Attacks

Here are some types of cyber attacks.

• Phising Attack: A phishing attack occurs when attackers send an email from a legitimate source to steal sensitive information, or they may send defected malware links to fool you so that you download the software for that link that contains malware or viruses to steal the data or information. We also prevent phishing attacks by using our analyzing skills to analyze and check the email headers. Do not click any of the malware links that infect your system or device.
• Whale Phising Attack: These attacks focused on high-level C-suite figures such as co-founders and vice presidents. The attackers in that case sent a fraud email to the C-suite profile, stealing very valuable information.
• Spear Phising Attack: The attackers focused on specific organization. The message that send the attackers is looks like legitimate. The attackers also attached a fake website like but it looks like a legitimate. The attackers also attached a fake website link but it looks like a legitimate and if person opens the link they see its legitimate and they enter the details so attackers easily stole that information.
• Password Attack: Passwords are important for attackers to steal any information. Attackers follow a brute force approach, like using your name, anniversary, or birth date as a password, or they may use different combinations to easily get the password. For example, if someone creates a social media account and uses a password like ‘12345678’, a hacker can easily guess the password or crack the password to hack your system or device.
• Malware Attack: Malware is malicious software that is developed by hackers. If the person installed the software that was sent by attackers, it damaged the computer, or in that case, the attacker stole the data.
• Web Attacks: In web attacks, attackers attack the information that is present on the web server. For Example, We are all familiar with online payments. If we send the money from one account to another, we want to enter the details first to process the payments. In that case, attackers are mainly focused on stealing the information or data.
• DOS Attacks: DOS stands for Denial of service .The aim of a DOS attack is to crash the system or shut down businesses. In this attack, the hackers use one internet connection and a single device to send a request in a continuous manner to a server so that the target server overloads the server bandwidth.
• URL Interpretation: In URL interpretation, the hackers steal the information in the URL. For example, if the URL is “example.com” and the hacker wants to go to the admin page of the URL to access the admin page, they type “http://example.com/admin.” When they successfully go to the admin page, they try to enter login details. Generally, the hacker guesses the admin username and admin password as “admin” because, in most cases, the user uses admin both as username and password. If the hacker successfully logs in, then they can easily steal and remove the data.
• Brute force attack: In this type of attack, the attackers assume login details for the target system. If they guess correctly, they hack the system. If not, in that case, they use bots to crack the login credentials and easily hack the system or device.

Prevention of Cyber Attacks

Here are some prevention that is helpful to prevent cyber attack.

• Use Strong Password: A strong password is a collection of letters, symbols, numbers, and any special characters. Do not use weak password. Because if we use weak password, hackers can easily guess the password and steal the data. Many websites automatically tell us if the password is weak or strong, and we easily update accordingly.
• Believe no-one emails: We help to prevent ourselves from cyberattacks by in that case, we don’t open unknown emails or any trash attachments and avoid clicking on any malware links.
• Always Secure your Device: If your device, either mobile or laptop, is always secured when we install the anti-virus software, it makes our devices secure. We also set a password and finger prints so that the hackers do not steal the data or information.

Conclusion

We cover the workings of cyberattacks and how we will recover from them. Due to the rapid increase in technology, we use some anti-virus software and many tools and techniques to recover and protect ourselves from hackers also stay connected with the relevant tools and techniques that always protected from these hacks.

Frequently Asked Questions on Cyber Attack – FAQs

What is cyber security and how it is different from cyber attack?

In cyber security, security means what makes our system secure, or we can say that it secures our sensitive information. It decreases the risk of cyber attack, while cyber attack is the process of stealing information from our computer’s data or harming and damaging our computer.

How to protect yourself from the hackers?

Here are some points that is helpful for protecting ourselves from the hackers:-

• Use a strong password instead of a weak password.
• Don’t believe any emails; first check the email headers then click any links.
• Use passwords and fingerprints on your mobile device or laptop to make it secure.
• Installing antivirus software that makes the system secure.

List Some Cyber security tools that recover from hackers?

Here is some cyber security tools.

• Burp suite: It is used for testing webapps.
• Password manager: A strong password makes the system secure. This tool is helpful to recover the system from hackers by using a strong password.
• PKI Services: PKI is a public key infrastructure; this tool enables users to easily transfer data over the internet.
• Snort: It detect the malicious activity or produce security alerts for users.