Ethical and Social Issues in the Information Age by Joseph Migga Kizza

Author:Joseph Migga Kizza
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

9.3 Types of Computer Systems Attacks

A great number of computer system crimes are actually computer attacks . Major computer attacks fall into two categories: penetration and denial of service attacks.

9.3.1 Penetration

A penetration attack involves breaking into a computer system using known security vulnerabilities to gain access to a cyberspace resource. With full penetration, an intruder has full access to all that system’s resources. Full penetration, therefore, allows an intruder to alter data files, change data, plant viruses , or install damaging Trojan horse programs into the system. It is also possible for intruders—especially if the victim computer is on a network—to use it as a launching pad to attack other network resources. Penetration attacks can be local, where the intruder gains access to a computer on a LAN on which the program is run, or global on a WAN like the Internet , where an attack can originate thousands of miles from the victim computer. Penetration attacks originate from many sources including:1. Insider Threat. For a long time, penetration attacks were limited to in-house employee-generated attacks to systems and theft of company property. In fact, disgruntled current or former employee, contractor, or other business partners are a major source of computer crimes because they do not need a great deal of knowledge about the victim computer system. In many cases, such insiders use the system everyday. This allows them to gain unrestricted access to the computer system, thus causing damage to the system and/or data. Mirko Zoriz [4] reports that organizations globally believe they are their own worst enemy when it comes to cyber security, with 45% saying they are ill-equipped to cope with the threat of malicious insiders and twice as many, 90%, calling malicious insiders a major threat to the organizations’ security.

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