Cyber Attacks
Name
Institution
Cyber Attacks
A cyberattack could be defined as any maneuver or entry that is offensive, meant to target computer information infrastructures, systems, personal computer devices, or computer networks. There are various types of cyberattacks that include Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. There is also SQL injection attack, password attack, Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack, phishing and spear-phishing attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS) attack, Drive-by attack, and Eavesdropping attack, among others. Those attacks that touch on nothing physical or instead destroy it could be more dangerous. For instance, cybersecurity breaches result in hackers penetrating bank accounts, social media accounts, and medical records to destroy or steal that data.
Malware
Malicious software that destroys data in a computer and the entire operating system is malware. The user is often deceived by the nature in which it disguises as a harmless file. Once the software is installed into the system, it replicates fast and infects the other computers installed within the system (Grosse et al., 2017). There could be a computer malfunction if malware remains undetected. Malware is known to spread in a computer as soon as it downloads or installs an infected software. It could enter the computer through an email or a link, and once it enters, it attaches itself to different files overwriting the data. Some malware is said to be executed before their activation, but others spread immediately (Grosse et al., 2017). As the malware travels through the computer network, it goes infecting the computer it moves into.
Buffer Overflow Attack
The memory storage regions that hold data temporarily while its transfer takes place from one location to another are known as buffers. A buffer overflow or overrun is a type of attack that happens when the data volume exceeds the memory buffer’s storage capacity. Therefore, the program that attempts to write the data to the buffer overwrites adjacent memory locations (Xu et al., 2018). For instance, if a buffer for log-in credentials is designed to expect username and password input of eight bytes, then a transaction involving ten bytes of input is done; the two extra bytes may write the excess data past the buffer boundary. A buffer overflow attack exploits buffer overflow issues by overwriting an application’s memory (Xu et al., 2018). Therefore, it changes the program’s execution path, triggering a negative response of files or, rather, exposes private data.
Password Cracking Tools
A password could be defined as a secret string of characters used for authentication in several applications. A password is used in gaining access to various accounts, databases, and repositories and protects them from unauthorized access at the same time (Yisa, Baba & Olaniyi, 2016). Some of the password cracking tools include Brutus, which claims to be the fastest and the most flexible tool. The second tool is rainbow Crack, which falls under the hash cracker tools, which is used to utilize a large-scale time-memory trade-off process for quicker password cracking than the brute force tools, which are traditional. The third tool is Wfuzz, which is a web application that cracks passwords through the use of brute-forcing (Yisa, Baba & Olaniyi, 2016). It can be used in finding hidden resources such as scripts, servlets, and directories.
Conclusion
Malware affects how the computer functions and its performance. It also consumes the internet data, interferes with the user’s computer activities, destroys the applications, and also it steals personal information, among other things. Buffer overflows typically have effects on all types of software. They result from inputs or failures that are malformed in the allocation of enough space for the buffer. The program can be forced to behave unpredictably, leading to incorrect results, generations, crashes, or memory access errors when the transaction overwrites executable codes. Some of the cyberattacks that crack passwords include brute force attacks, dictionary attacks, and rainbow tables, among others.
References
Grosse, K., Papernot, N., Manoharan, P., Backes, M., & McDaniel, P. (2017, September). Adversarial Examples For Malware Detection. In European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (pp. 62-79). Springer, Cham.
Xu, B., Wang, W., Hao, Q., Zhang, Z., Du, P., Xia, T., … & Wang, X. (2018). A Security Design For The Detecting Of Buffer Overflow Attacks in IoT devices. IEEE Access, 6, 72862- 72869.
Yisa, V., Baba, M., & Olaniyi, E. (2016, November). A Review Of Top Open-Source Password Cracking Tools. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and its Applications (ICTA).
