Types of Attacks on Network Security

This section describes some of the most common types of attacks on a network connected to the Internet.

Denial of Service Attacks

These attacks make the system unavailable for customers, often by overloading the service with spurious requests. These attacks flood the network with useless traffic resulting in an inability to serve customers. Such attacks can crash the system in extreme cases, or just make the system extremely slow and thus unusable by customers.

Buffer Overrun Exploits

If a program does not check buffer limits when reading and receiving data, this opening can be exploited to add arbitrary data into a program or file system. When run, this data can give the intruder root access to your system.

Snooping and Replay Attacks

Snooping attacks involve an intruder listening to traffic between two machines on your network. If traffic includes passing unencrypted passwords, an unauthorized individual can potentially access your network and read confidential data.

IP Spoofing

In a spoofing attack, the intruder listening to your network traffic finds the IP address of a trusted host and sends messages indicating that the message is coming from that trusted host.

Internal Exposure

Many network break-ins are the result of a malicious or disgruntled present or former employee misusing access to information or breaking into your network.