2 Types of Security
2 Types of Security
We are living in a digital era. Now a day, most of the people use computer and internet.
Due to the dependency on digital things, the illegal computer activity is growing and
changing like any type of crime.
Web-based attacks
These are the attacks which occur on a website or web applications. Some of the important
web-based attacks are as follows-
1. Injection attacks
It is the attack in which some data will be injected into a web application to manipulate the
application and fetch the required information.
2. DNS Spoofing
DNS Spoofing is a type of computer security hacking. Whereby a data is introduced into a
DNS resolver's cache causing the name server to return an incorrect IP address, diverting
traffic to the attacker?s computer or any other computer. The DNS spoofing attacks can go
on for a long period of time without being detected and can cause serious security issues.
3. Session Hijacking
It is a security attack on a user session over a protected network. Web applications create
cookies to store the state and user sessions. By stealing the cookies, an attacker can have
access to all of the user data.
4. Phishing
Phishing is a type of attack which attempts to steal sensitive information like user login
credentials and credit card number. It occurs when an attacker is masquerading as a
trustworthy entity in electronic communication.
5. Brute force
It is a type of attack which uses a trial and error method. This attack generates a large
number of guesses and validates them to obtain actual data like user password and
personal identification number. This attack may be used by criminals to crack encrypted
data, or by security, analysts to test an organization's network security.
6. Denial of Service
It is an attack which meant to make a server or network resource unavailable to the users.
It accomplishes this by flooding the target with traffic or sending it information that triggers
a crash. It uses the single system and single internet connection to attack a server. It can
be classified into the following-
Volume-based attacks- Its goal is to saturate the bandwidth of the attacked site, and is
measured in bit per second.
Application layer attacks- Its goal is to crash the web server and is measured in request
per second.
7. Dictionary attacks
This type of attack stored the list of a commonly used password and validated them to get
original password.
8. URL Interpretation
It is a type of attack where we can change the certain parts of a URL, and one can make a
web server to deliver web pages for which he is not authorized to browse.
It is a type of attack that allows an attacker to access unauthorized or essential files which
is available on the web server or to execute malicious files on the web server by making use
of the include functionality.
System-based attacks
These are the attacks which are intended to compromise a computer or a computer
network. Some of the important system-based attacks are as follows-
1. Virus
It is a type of malicious software program that spread throughout the computer files without
the knowledge of a user. It is a self-replicating malicious computer program that replicates
by inserting copies of itself into other computer programs when executed. It can also
execute instructions that cause harm to the system.
2. Worm
3. Trojan horse
It is a malicious program that occurs unexpected changes to computer setting and unusual
activity, even when the computer should be idle. It misleads the user of its true intent. It
appears to be a normal application but when opened/executed some malicious code will run
in the background.
4. Backdoors
It is a method that bypasses the normal authentication process. A developer may create a
backdoor so that an application or operating system can be accessed for troubleshooting or
other purposes.
5. Bots
A bot (short for "robot") is an automated process that interacts with other network services.
Some bots program run automatically, while others only execute commands when they
receive specific input. Common examples of bots program are the crawler, chatroom bots,
and malicious bots.
E-Commerce Security:-
E-Commerce refers to the activity of buying and selling things over the internet. Simply, it
refers to the commercial transactions which are conducted online. E-commerce can be
drawn on many technologies such as mobile commerce, Internet marketing, online
transaction processing, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, electronic data
interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.
E-commerce threat is occurring by using the internet for unfair means with the intention of
stealing, fraud and security breach. There are various types of e-commerce threats. Some
are accidental, some are purposeful, and some of them are due to human error. The most
common security threats are an electronic payments system, e-cash, data misuse,
credit/debit card frauds, etc.
The electronic payment systems have a very important role in e-commerce. E-commerce
organizations use electronic payment systems that refer to paperless monetary
transactions. It revolutionized the business processing by reducing paperwork, transaction
costs, and labour cost. E-commerce processing is user-friendly and less time consuming
than manual processing. Electronic commerce helps a business organization expand its
market reach expansion. There is a certain risk with the electronic payments system.
E-cash
E-cash is a paperless cash system which facilitates the transfer of funds anonymously. E-
cash is free to the user while the sellers have paid a fee for this. The e-cash fund can be
either stored on a card itself or in an account which is associated with the card. The most
common examples of e-cash system are transit card, PayPal, GooglePay, Paytm, etc.
Backdoors Attacks
It is a type of attacks which gives an attacker to unauthorized access to a system by
bypasses the normal authentication mechanisms. It works in the background and hides
itself from the user that makes it difficult to detect and remove.
Denial of service attacks
A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a security attack in which the attacker takes
action that prevents the legitimate (correct) users from accessing the electronic devices. It
makes a network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily disrupting
services of a host connected to the Internet.
Eavesdropping
This is an unauthorized way of listening to private communication over the network. It does
not interfere with the normal operations of the targeting system so that the sender and the
recipient of the messages are not aware that their conversation is tracking.
A debit card is of a plastic card which issued by the financial organization to account holder
who has a savings deposit account that can be used instead of cash to make purchases. The
debit card can be used only when the fund is available in the account.
Some of the important threats associated with the debit/credit card are-
Skimming-
It is the process of attaching a data-skimming device in the card reader of the ATM. When
the customer swipes their card in the ATM card reader, the information is copied from the
magnetic strip to the device. By doing this, the criminals get to know the details of the Card
number, name, CVV number, expiry date of the card and other details.
Unwanted Presence-
It is a rule that not more than one user should use the ATM at a time. If we find more than
one people lurking around together, the intention behind this is to overlook our card details
while we were making our transaction.
Vishing/Phishing
Phishing is an activity in which an intruder obtained the sensitive information of a user such
as password, usernames, and credit card details, often for malicious reasons, etc.
Vishing is an activity in which an intruder obtained the sensitive information of a user via
sending SMS on mobiles. These SMS and Call appears to be from a reliable source, but in
real they are fake. The main objective of vishing and phishing is to get the customer's PIN,
account details, and passwords.
Online Transaction
Online transaction can be made by the customer to do shopping and pay their bills over the
internet. It is as easy as for the customer, also easy for the customer to hack into our
system and steal our sensitive information. Some important ways to steal our confidential
information during an online transaction are-
o By downloading software which scans our keystroke and steals our password and
card details.
o By redirecting a customer to a fake website which looks like original and steals our
sensitive information.
o By using public Wi-Fi
POS Theft
It is commonly done at merchant stores at the time of POS transaction. In this, the
salesperson takes the customer card for processing payment and illegally copies the card
details for later use.
Security Policies
Security policies are a formal set of rules which is issued by an organization to ensure that
the user who are authorized to access company technology and information assets comply
with rules and guidelines related to the security of information. It is a written document in
the organization which is responsible for how to protect the organizations from threats and
how to handles them when they will occur. A security policy also considered to be a "living
document" which means that the document is never finished, but it is continuously updated
as requirements of the technology and employee changes.
The best thing about having a policy is being able to increase the level of consistency which
saves time, money and resources. The policy should inform the employees about their
individual duties, and telling them what they can do and what they cannot do with the
organization sensitive information.
When any human mistake will occur, and system security is compromised, then the security
policy of the organization will back up any disciplinary action and also supporting a case in a
court of law. The organization policies act as a contract which proves that an organization
has taken steps to protect its intellectual property, as well as its customers and clients.
It is not necessary for companies to provide a copy of their information security policy to
other vendors during a business deal that involves the transference of their sensitive
information. It is true in a case of bigger businesses which ensures their own security
interests are protected when dealing with smaller businesses which have less high-end
security systems in place.
A well-written security policy can also be seen as an educational document which informs
the readers about their importance of responsibility in protecting the organization sensitive
data. It involves on choosing the right passwords, to providing guidelines for file transfers
and data storage which increases employee's overall awareness of security and how it can
be strengthened.
We use security policies to manage our network security. Most types of security policies are
automatically created during the installation. We can also customize policies to suit our
specific environment. There are some important cybersecurity policies recommendations
describe below-
o It helps to detect, removes, and repairs the side effects of viruses and security risks
by using signatures.
o It helps to detect the threats in the files which the users try to download by using
reputation data from Download Insight.
o It helps to detect the applications that exhibit suspicious behaviour by using SONAR
heuristics and reputation data.
2. Firewall Policy
This policy provides the following protection:
o It blocks the unauthorized users from accessing the systems and networks that
connect to the Internet.
o It detects the attacks by cybercriminals.
o It removes the unwanted sources of network traffic.
This policy automatically detects and blocks the network attacks and browser attacks. It
also protects applications from vulnerabilities. It checks the contents of one or more data
packages and detects malware which is coming through legal ways.
4. LiveUpdate policy
This policy can be categorized into two types one is LiveUpdate Content policy, and another
is LiveUpdate Setting Policy. The LiveUpdate policy contains the setting which determines
when and how client computers download the content updates from LiveUpdate. We can
define the computer that clients contact to check for updates and schedule when and how
often clients computer check for updates.
This policy protects a system's resources from applications and manages the peripheral
devices that can attach to a system. The device control policy applies to both Windows and
Mac computers whereas application control policy can be applied only to Windows clients.
between two or more parties online. However, on the other hand, the internet is nowadays
attacks.
1. Integrity
Example: The most common threat will be “would any unauthorized person will intercept
and redirect payment into a different account” since ecommerce sites prefer online transfer
mostly.
2. Non-repudiation
Good business depends on both buyers and sellers. They must not deny any facts or rules
was received or not. It ensures that the purchase cannot be denied by the person who
completed the transaction. In other words, it’s an assurance that anyone cannot
Mostly non-repudiation uses a digital signature for online transactions because no one
with them during a credit card payment transaction, it will not be processed further to the
merchant.
3. Authenticity
remain as who they are in real. Both the seller and buyer must provide proof of their
between them.
the internet. In ecommerce, fraudulent identity and authentication are also possible, which
makes identity a difficult process. Some common ways to ensure a person's identity are
Example: Some users can use a fake email address to access any of the ecommerce
services.
4. Confidentiality
person on the internet. In other words, only the people who are authorized can gain access
consider this case for resetting the password, where an ecommerce site sends a one-time
password to their customer in email or phone number if someone else reads it.
5. Privacy
control the usage of information by the customers that they have given to the merchant.
6. Availability
Continuous availability of the data is the key to provide a better customer experience in
visibility, search engine rankings, and site traffic. Data which is present on the website must
be secured and available 24x7x 365 for the customer without downtime. If it is not, it will
Example: An ecommerce website can be flooded with useless traffic that causes to shut
down your site, making impossible for the user to access the site.
Cyber security protocols are plans, protocols, actions and measures that aim to keep your
organization safe from malicious attacks, data breaches and other security incidents.
In order to make sure that your organization is protected, you need to employ various
protocols and software that work well together. Since there are multiple ways through which
an attacker can gain access to your networks, systems and sensitive data, you need to
employ more than one security measure. Moreover, you must review and update these
measures regularly.
Below are some simple and cost efficient cyber security protocols that will protect your
business from malicious attacks and hackers.
1. Firewalls:-
As simple as they sound, firewalls are one of the most efficient tools in
battling with cyber criminals and malicious attackers. An efficient and up-to-date
firewall keeps various threats away, such as malware, viruses and spam.
2. Encryption:-
Regardless of how many barriers you set around your sensitive data,
someone will try to intrude. Having a proper incident response protocol allows your
security professionals to take immediate action and keep intruders away.
4. Education:-
In order to make sure that your organization is safe, you must also consider
the human factor. To do so, you must educate your employees on topical issues
like phishing along with the security measures your organization takes.
Steganography
The word Steganography is derived from two Greek words- ‘stegos’ meaning ‘to cover’ and
‘grayfia’, meaning ‘writing’, thus translating to ‘covered writing’, or ‘hidden
writing’. Steganography is a method of hiding secret data, by embedding it into an audio,
video, image or text file. It is one of the methods employed to protect secret or sensitive
data from malicious attacks.
“Steganography is the art and science of embedding secret messages in a cover message
in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the
existence of the message.”
As the image depicts, both cover file(X) and secret message(M) are fed into steganographic
encoder as input. Steganographic Encoder function, f(X,M,K) embeds the secret message
into a cover file. Resulting Stego Object looks very similar to your cover file, with no visible
changes. This completes encoding. To retrieve the secret message, Stego Object is fed into
Steganographic Decoder.
Now, we have a lot of modern steganographic techniques and tools to make sure that
knows our data remains secret. Now you might be wondering if steganography is same as
cryptography. No, they are two different concepts and this steganography tutorial presents
you the main differences between them.
At their core, both of them have almost the same goal, which is protecting a message or
information from the third parties. However, they use a totally different mechanism to
protect the information.
STEGANOGRAPHY CRYPTOGRAPHY
Data
Never Always
Visibility
Data
Doesn’t alter the overall structure of data Alters the overall structure of data
Structure
Failure Once the presence of a secret message is If you possess the decryption key, then
you can figure out original message from
discovered, anyone can use the secret data
the ciphertext
So, in other words, steganography is more discreet than cryptography when we want to
send confidential information. The downside being, the hidden message is easier to extract
if the presence of secret is discovered. For the remainder of this steganography tutorial, we
will learn about different steganography techniques and tools.
Steganography Techniques
Depending on the nature of the cover object(actual object in which secret data is
embedded), steganography can be divided into five types:
1. Text Steganography
2. Image Steganography
3. Video Steganography
4. Audio Steganography
5. Network Steganography
Computer forensics:-