Cyber Attack

Description
A cyber attack is a malicious action against targeted computer systems or individuals, often by remote hackers (attackers) undefined. Over the past few decades the motives behind cyber attacks have changed from individuals simply challenging themselves and security systems, to hindering computer performance and in recent years, for illicit financial gains. Cyber attacks can have a huge impact on its victims and as of 2017, it's predicted that cyber attacks may result in nearly $450 billion in damages undefined, and this figure is predicted to rise to $2 trillion by 2019 undefined.

Types of Cyber Attacks
There is a wide range of cyber attacks that can be used against organizations and individuals, and the type of attack is determined by many different aspects. These aspects include the type of attack, who the target it, the objective of the attack and, to a small extent, the attackers personal preferences of attack. Some of the most popular attack types include the following undefined:

Malware
Malware is currently the main form of cyber attack, as attacks can develop a malicious application to carry out most of the attack for them, thereby allowing the attacks to remain as anonymous as possible and yet still benefit from the malware attack. There are different types of malware that can be used, but the most common ones are viruses, worms, and Trojans. However there is an increasing popularity in the use of ransomware in recent years. Malware is designed to infect a computer and perform whatever actions the attacker programmed it to do. This can be changing how programs behave, stealing information, changing computer settings and configurations, stealing or damaging files, etc.

Phishing
Phishing attacks are a type of social engineering attack where the attacker will try to trick the user into giving up information or downloading and triggering a malware on their computer. These attacks often come in emails and may contain malicious attachments or website links. The attachments may portray an image or invoice (for example) and when the user opens the attachment, the malware may be embedded and designed to trigger once the attachment is opened. A malicious link may portray a legitimate website, but the URL coded in the link is actually directed at a server (sometimes controlled by the attacker) that contains malware and is designed to download malware from that server. In some cases the email may lead to a website that seems legitimate but is a copy the attacker created and it may ask for credentials or some other personal information. Once entered that information is sent to the attacker. Spear phishing is a type of phishing attack but it's targeted at a specific individual or organization, whereas a phishing attack targets the general public.

SQL Injection
SQL injection is a form of attack mainly targeted at database servers. SQL (Structured Query Language) is a programming language used to design and query databases and is one of the most commonly used language for databases worldwide. If the server and its data are not protected properly, an attacker could inject a query into the SQL server and have it return data its not suppose to. This could be sensitive data such as personal details, medical records, financial details and so on. These can be used in advertising campaigns (unsolicited texts and phone calls), extortion, identity theft, financial theft and fraud. Often a vulnerability in the server will have to be exploited in order to inject the malicious query as there are several mechanisms that can be put in place to prevent SQL injection attacks. In cases where organizations suffer data breaches, SQL injection sometimes plays a key role in allowing the attacker to obtain the information that they need.

Denial of Service (DoS)
A DoS attack is one of the most common forms of cyber attacks and as the name suggests, it denies the victim the ability to use computers and network services properly. This is achieved by flooding the target machine with high volumes of network traffic to the point where it cannot cope and ultimately slows down significantly or even crashes. A larger scale of this is a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which is when the attackers are able to send network requests from thousands of devices worldwide to bring down a target network by means of a botnet. A DDoS is mainly used to bring down powerful networks, like those of large organizations that have resources capable of handling large volumes of traffic. When an organization's network is forced to shut down it may result in huge financial losses as they are unable to operate properly. Such attacks are mainly done out of protest against the target (see hactivism).

Motives for Cyber Attacks
There are a wide range of reasons why someone would commit a cyber attack and not all reasons are necessarily for illicit gains. Some of the main reasons are as follows undefined:

Financial
The main reason for cyber attacks is financial gain. Attackers will try steal confidential information that may allow them to steal funds from victims, they could sell stolen information to cyber criminals on the dark web, or they could extort funds from victims by means of ransomware. Some organizations will use covert malware (see spyware) or independent hackers to break into a rival organization's systems and steal valuable trade secrets to gain an unfair advantage.

Political
Some people commit cyber attacks by means of political protest. This is what is regarded as hacktivism, and it generally consists of a group of hackers working together to cause disruption against their opponents (usually government entities). The hacker group, Anonymous, are the most famous hacktivist group and have caused a significant amount of damage to organizations and governments around the world. However hacktivism is not necessarily the only political reason. State-sponsored attacks are also a form of protest. Some governments such as North Korea and Russia have been accused of having state-funded hackers to launch cyber attacks against their opponents. An example is the NotPetya attack which was suspected to have been launched by state-sponsored Russian hackers against the Ukraine.

Challenge
Sometimes people commit cyber attacks purely to challenge themselves. This was often the case in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as people would develop malware and break into systems not for any financial gain, but simply to prove that they could or challenge to themselves. In some cases, organizations challenge hackers to break into their systems and ultimately test their security mechanisms. This is known as penetration testing, and is the only legal form of hacking provided the hacker stays within their contract's constraints.

Cause Damage
Some attackers will launch cyber attacks in order to cause as much damage as possible to their target. This can mean breaking into the target network or system and corrupting, stealing or deleting data, destroy computer systems (such as NotPetya wiping the master boot record from infected machines), damage an organization's reputation, inflict huge financial losses and more.

Information
The most valuable thing to an attacker is information. Information can lead to huge gains for attackers both financially and for advantages over their targets. Governments hacking into other governments for state secrets (and the same goes for organizations trying to steal trade secrets from each other). Information can also be used for extortion by attackers threatening to leak sensitive information to the public. The theft of information can lead to more severe attacks as hackers can use information to find out details about their target's network infrastructure thereby discovering software and hardware used and what vulnerabilities they may have that could be exploited. Without information, the attackers would most likely be unable to carry out any of the above mentioned motives for attacking in the first place.