Types of Network Attacks

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Networks are necessary for everyone to communicate with each other from a long distance. People tend to transfer data instantly to each other through internet to save time. Unfortunately, there are also people who misuse it to perform different kinds of attacks - also known as network attacks in order to gain benefits. According to US Department of Defense (n.d.), network attack is an act of disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy the data in computers and computer networks, or the computers and networks itself. There are many types of network attacks, but only 3 common attacks that can be found in the book “Seven deadliest network attacks” by Borkin, Kraus, and Prowell (2010), and “CompTIA security+ all-in-one exam guide (Exam SY0-301) third edition” by (Conklin, White, Williams, Davis, & Cothren, 2011). The types of network attacks will be focus on are denial of service attack, war dialing attack, and man-in-the-middle attack (Refer to Figure 1.1 in Appendix 1).
The first type of network attacks is called denial of service (DoS) attack. It is the common network attack because it can be executed easily (Easttom, 2013). According to Convery (2004), DoS attack is an act of intentionally degrade or block the computer network resources of others. The resources may refer to network bandwidth, computing power or operating system data structures (Patrikakis, Masikos, & Zouraraki, 2004). The common goal of the attacker to perform DoS attack is to suspend and interrupt other computer host, make their network resources become unavailable (Borkin, Kraus & Prowell, 2010). This can be achieved by sending mass messages to the target until the target’s resources overwhelmed, where it is the same scenario as road traffic jam in the reality. In a DoS ...

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...ys during the process of exchanging keys of both hosts. Normally the data will be directly transmitted from your network to the network of your friend. However, due to the communication path being intercepted by the attacker, the data will now transfer to the attacker’s network first before transfer to your friend. As the public keys are still in the attack’s hand, the attacker can now decrypt the data sent by both of you, which results the data or the communication detail between you and your friend being stolen (Refer to Figure 2.2 in Appendix 2).
In conclusion, the types of network attacks being focus in the report are denial of service attack, war dialing attack, and man-in-the-middle attack. Although networks are necessary for everyone as it provide many benefits, there are also people who misuse it to perform some unmoral acts toward the other innocent users.

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