Types of Web Threats

The internet is a digital jungle; there is a wide range of dangers waiting for you out there. In this brief article, Cloudbric will introduce you to some common web attacks that make you wish you had web protection beforehand.

Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks have grown more and more sophisticated as the world wide web becomes more diverse. The primary objective of a DoS attack is to overwhelm the capacity of the web server where your website is being hosted.

Essentially, hackers will continually flood your web traffic to ultimately shut down your network simply due to overloading. This occurs when multiple systems are compromised by malware and work together to attack a network.

DDoS, on the other hand, focused on also attacking servers but in a much larger scale. In this case, web hackers take control of a wide array of computers to form what we refer to as “botnets”. These botnets are then used as zombie mercenaries to bombard and attack a certain web server of the hacker’s choosing. If you’re a popular blogger or a business owner, you can definitely see the big issue here at play.

A simple DoS or DDoS attack can essentially shut down your website and deny access to your products and services to your customers. This is devastating for businesses and subscribers who need constant updates from you.

SQL Injections

SQL Injections differ from DDoS in terms of target. While DDoS seeks to disturb the normal flow of a website, SQL Injections are malicious programs, which were designed to infiltrate a database with the purpose of obtaining sensitive information.

SQL Injections looks for faulty code or poor designed forms that might give the hacker a way to access your database’s scripting. Once the hacker gains access, a hacker can “inject” their own code into the database, allowing them to manipulate and steal the sensitive stored data. Here are some measure you can take to protect your sensitive information against SQL Injection.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

XSS is one of the most insidious attacks on the web. XSS is a malicious code injected to the client-side of a website. One could get infected by simply visiting a website or using a web application. Just like SQL Injections, hackers look into a website for any kind of input vulnerability so they can inject their own code.

Some attacks examples are:

1. XSS downloads your user’s cookie information allowing the hacker to impersonate you and access your online accounts with ease.
2. An infected website might show inappropriate content.
3. XSS lets the hacker record your keyboard’s events so your IDs, passwords, and even bank account information could be collected by the hacker.

Phishing

Phishing would be considered the minimum threat of all web attacks but it doesn’t make it less dangerous. Usually phishing comes in the form of emails sent by seemingly credible entities such as banks, relatives, shops, etc.

In reality, they are fake emails crafted by a hacker. The emails will bait the users to click a link or fill a form. The hacker will receive the information and gain access to your personal accounts, leaving you exposed for identity theft, online scams or much worse. We have a comprehensive guide about how to protect yourself against phishing too!

In this new digital age, it is very important to have a basic understanding about cyber threats. Hackers always coming out with new ways to hack you so keep up with Cloudbric to learn how to protect your businesses and websites!