Types and effects of Cyber Threats

Thesis

There are different types of cyber threats that affect the users in a negative manner and they include password attack, malware attack, phishing threats, MitM, DoS and DDoS among others. 

Introduction

1. Cyber threats refer to the possibility of a malicious trial to disrupt or damage a computer system or network. 

1. The cyber threat may entail the trial to steal, and infiltrate or access data without legal permission from the owner (Gharibi & Shaabi, 2012).
2. The cyber threat can act as the potential for security violation that occurs during circumstance, action, capability or occasion, which could cause harm or breach security (Crawford, 2013). 
3. The cyber-attack can stand for offensive maneuver targeting computer information systems, personal computing devices, computer networks or computer-based infrastructures (Emerson, 2016).
4. Based on the context of the damage caused, cyber-attacks can be labeled cyber terrorism, cyber warfare, or cyber campaign (Kerner, 2017). 

Main Point One- Distributed Denial-Of-Services (DDoS) and Denial-Of-Services (DoS) Threats

2. The DoS is an attack that overwhelms resources in a given system, hence, affecting its response to a given service or user request (Samtani et al., 2017). 
3. The DDoS threat refers to an attack that occurs in machines hosting huge information after being affected by malicious software monitored by the attacker, hence, contributing to destruction or loss of the organizational data (Gharibi & Shaabi, 2012). 

1. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) threat happens when the attackers target the systems of small in-process threat by carrying out a connection request (Tounsi & Rais, 2018).
2. Teardrop attack leads to fragmentation and length offset sectors in chronological Internet Protocol (IP) (Samtani et al., 2017).

Main Point Two- Man-in-the-middle (MitM) threats

4. MitM is an attack that happens during the time hackers interfere with the communications between the user and the server.

1. Session hijacking occurs when an attack manipulate a certain session while the interaction between the trusted network server and trusted client are interacting (Emerson, 2016).
2. IP spoofing is applied by the hackers to persuade system that it is interacting with trusted and a known entity, hence, offering the attacker access to the system (Crawford, 2013).

Main Point Three- Phishing Threats

5. The phishing threat refers to an aspect of sending emails that seem to come from a trusted source with an aim of obtaining personal details or influencing the users to transact a specific deal (Willard, 2007). This trickery makes many users to be conned or loss their confidential information to unintended parties (Laipson, 2017). 

Main Point Four- Malware Attack 

6. Malware attack is a threat concerning malicious software that is installed in the targeted system without the user’s consent, hence, ending up lurking in important applications or replicate itself on the internet (Gharibi & Shaabi, 2012). 

Main Point Five- Password Attack 

7. Password attack threat is mostly applied as a mechanism to endorse users to an information system, hence, making it easy for the attackers to illegally access the system without user’s notice (Crawford, 2013).

1. Brute-Force is an activity of guessing the password by utilizing a random approach 
2. A dictionary attack is an attempt to obtain passwords by copying encrypted files containing login details (Laipson, 2017). 

Conclusion

The cyber threats can be categorized into different groups including password attack, malware attack, phishing threats, MitM, DoS and DDoS. The above details offer brief information about the effects of different types of cyber threats. In consideration with this case, it occurs that there is a need for additional research to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the factors acting as cyber threats. Conversely, the online users are supposed to familiarize themselves with the above threatening elements in order to be able to cope up with them in an effective manner. 

References

Crawford, D. (2013). Emerging cyber threats ring in the new year. Communications of the ACM, 56(1), 20.

Emerson, R. G. (2016). Limits to a cyber-threat. Contemporary politics, 22(2), 178-196. 

Gharibi, W., & Shaabi, M. (2012). Cyber threats on social networking websites. arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.2420.

Kerner, S. M. (2017). 18 Cyber-security trends organizations need to brace for in 2018. Eweek, 1-4.

Laipson, E. (2017). How will emerging cyber threats change the way, we think about conflict?. World Politics Review (Selective Content), 1-3.

Samtani, S., Chinn, R., Chen, H., & Nunamaker, J. F. (2017). Exploring emerging hacker assets and key hackers for proactive cyber threat intelligence. Journal of Management Information Systems, 34(4), 1023-1053. 

Tounsi, W., & Rais, H. (2018). A survey on technical threat intelligence in the age of sophisticated cyber-attacks. Computers & Security, 72212-233. 

Willard, N. E. (2007). Cyberbullying and cyber threats: Responding to the challenge of online social aggression, threats, and distress, Champaign, Research Press.