20 December, 2016

With majority of the business operations being conducted online, web based attacks are continually on the rise. Cyber criminals devise innovative and more sophisticated techniques to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in the web applications. The motive behind these attacks may be different, to steal a company’s sensitive information, display spam advertizements on the website or download malware to the user’s computer.

Discussed below are the different types of web based attacks:

Structured Query Language (SQL) Injection

SQL injection is a common technique that involves injecting a malicious code to alter the sensitive information in the website’s back-end database. It may also be performed to steal payment card details, username and password as well as insert spam links to the website. SQL attacks are quite easy to execute and can severely compromise the data security of a company.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Cross-site scripting (XSS) can be defined as a client-side code injection attack in which the hacker injects a malicious script, predominantly JavaScript, in a legitimate website. As these scripts appear to be from a trusted source, they are often executed by the end users. This, in turn, allows the hacker to gain access to the cookies, session tokens, passwords and other sensitive information.

Drive-By Downloads

In this type of attack, the hackers tamper a web application with an HTML code that stealthily downloads a malware whenever a user visits the website. Once downloaded, the program may execute itself to record keystrokes, access important files, hijack online banking sessions or use the computer as a part of botnet.

Brute Force

Brute force attacks are mainly targeted attempts to decode a user’s login credentials. In this, the hackers use a trial and error method using different user names as well as passwords till they are able to identify the correct one. Creating strong passwords and limiting the number of invalid login attempts may help to prevent a brute force attack.

DoS And DDoS

Denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are carried out by flooding a website with traffic from multiple sources, making it unavailable for the genuine users. In a DoS attack, a single computer system may attempt to crash the target server with data packets. A DDoS attack is when multiple computers, widely distributed in a botnet, send simultaneous requests to slow down and ultimately halt the web server.

We, at Centex Technologies, can help to protect your corporate network from different web-based attacks. For more information, you can call us at (855) 375 – 9654.