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Phishing is a cybercrime technique where attackers impersonate legitimate entities to deceive individuals into revealing sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card numbers. It often involves fraudulent emails or websites that appear authentic, exploiting human trust and lack of awareness to gain unauthorized access to personal data.
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Malware, short for malicious software, is a broad category of software designed to harm, exploit, or otherwise engage in illicit activities on a computer system. It encompasses various forms including viruses, worms, and ransomware, each with distinct mechanisms and objectives, posing significant threats to cybersecurity and data integrity.
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Social engineering is a manipulation technique that exploits human psychology to gain unauthorized access to information or systems. It often involves tricking individuals into breaking normal security procedures to reveal confidential information or perform actions that compromise security.
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A zero-day exploit is a cyberattack that occurs on the same day a software vulnerability is discovered, before the software developer can issue a fix. These exploits are highly dangerous as they take advantage of security gaps that are unknown to the software vendor and users, leaving systems vulnerable until a patch is released.
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Denial of Service (DoS) is a cyber-attack strategy aimed at making a network service unavailable to its intended users by overwhelming it with a flood of illegitimate requests. This disrupts normal operations and can lead to significant downtime and financial losses for the targeted organization.
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A Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attack is a cybersecurity breach where an attacker intercepts and potentially alters the communication between two parties without their knowledge. This type of attack can lead to data theft, unauthorized access, and compromised integrity of the transmitted information.
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SQL injection is a type of cyber attack where an attacker exploits vulnerabilities in an application's software by inserting malicious SQL code into input fields to manipulate the database. This can result in unauthorized access to sensitive data, data corruption, or even complete control over the database server.
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Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a security vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users, potentially leading to data theft, session hijacking, or defacement. It exploits the trust a user has in a particular website and can be mitigated through input validation, output encoding, and the use of security headers like Content Security Policy (CSP).
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A brute force attack is a trial-and-error method used to decode encrypted data such as passwords or PINs, by systematically checking all possible combinations until the correct one is found. While effective against weak passwords, it is time-consuming and easily thwarted by strong encryption algorithms and security measures like account lockouts and rate limiting.
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An insider threat refers to a security risk that originates from within the targeted organization, often involving employees or other trusted insiders who have access to sensitive information. These threats can be malicious or accidental, and they pose significant challenges to organizations due to the difficulty in detecting and mitigating them effectively.
A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal functioning of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming it with a flood of traffic from multiple sources. This type of attack exploits the distributed nature of the internet, making it difficult to mitigate due to the sheer volume and diversity of the attacking sources.
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An adversary model is a theoretical framework used to define the capabilities and objectives of an attacker in security scenarios, helping to evaluate the robustness of systems against potential threats. By understanding the adversary's potential actions and limitations, security professionals can design more resilient systems and develop effective countermeasures.
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack involves overwhelming a targeted server, service, or network with a flood of internet traffic, rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users. This is typically achieved by leveraging multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic, often organized into a botnet.
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A threat model is like a plan to keep your toys safe from being taken or broken. It helps you think about who might want to take your toys and how you can stop them.
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