The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

The threat of online security can be distinguish between nontechnical and technical.

Nontechnical attacks are those in which a perpetrator uses some form of deception or persuasion to trick people into revealing information or performing actions that can compromise the security of a network. Examples are pretexting and social engineering.

Technical attack is an attack perpetrated using software and system knowledge or expertise. An example of technical attack is a computer worm.

Types of attacks
Zero-day incidents are attacks through previously unknown weaknesses in their computer network.

Denial of service is an attack in which so many requests for service or access bombard a system that it crashes or cannot respond. Zombied PCs can be used to launch DOS attacks or spread adware.

Phishing is a crimeware technique to steal the identity of a target company to get the identities of customers.

Web servers and web pages can be hijacked and configured to control or redirect unsuspecting users to scam or phishing sites.

A botnet is a huge number of hijacked Internet computers that have been set up to forward spam and viruses to other computers on the Internet.

A virus is a piece of software code that inserts itself into a host, including the operating systems, running its host program activates the virus.

A worm is a software program that runs independently, consuming the resources of its host in order to maintain itself, that is capable of propagating a complete working version of itself into another machine.

A macro virus is a virus or worm that executes when the application object that contains the macro is opened or a particular procedure is executed.

Trojan horse is a program that appears to have a useful function but that contains a hidden function that presents a security risk.

Trojan-Phisher-Rebery is a new variant of a Trojan program that stole tens of thousands of stolen identities from 125 countries that the victims believed were collected by legitimate company.

Banking Trojan is a Trojan that comes to life when computer owners visit one of a number of online banking or e-commerce sites.
Rootkit is a special Trojan Horse program that modifies existing operating system software so that an intruder can hide the presence of Trojan program.