Which Of The Following Attack Compromises Availability
Which of the Following Attack Compromises Availability?
Availability, in the context of cybersecurity, refers to the assurance that data and resources are accessible to authorized users whenever they are needed. Attacks that compromise availability typically aim at disrupting access to services or resources, either temporarily or permanently. Let’s explore various types of attacks in detail and identify those that primarily compromise availability:
1. Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks
Definition: A DoS attack seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services.
Mechanism: This is achieved by flooding the target with excessive requests, overwhelming its capacity to process legitimate requests. Attackers often use a single computer to launch this attack.
Impact on Availability: DoS attacks can significantly degrade performance and render services unavailable.
2. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
Definition: A DDoS attack is similar to a DoS attack, but it utilizes multiple computers, often compromised into a botnet, to launch an attack simultaneously.
Mechanism: The network gets flooded with traffic from numerous sources, making it difficult to block the attack. The distributed nature makes it more powerful than a traditional DoS attack.
Impact on Availability: This can completely obstruct access to a system or service, causing a major compromise in availability.
3. Ransomware
Definition: Ransomware is a type of malicious software that threatens to publish the victim’s data or blocks access to it until a ransom is paid.
Mechanism: It encrypts files on the target system and displays ransom notes demanding payment for decryption keys.
Impact on Availability: Until the ransomware is resolved, either through payment or other means like decryption tools, the data or system is unavailable to its users.
4. Resource Exhaustion Attacks
Definition: These are attacks that aim to deplete system resources, like CPU, memory, or disk space, to degrade system performance.
Mechanism: Resource exhaustion can occur through various means like excessive creation of files, consumption of bandwidth, or usage of system resources.
Impact on Availability: By exhausting critical resources, these attacks degrade system performance and halt legitimate operations.
5. Traffic Injection Attacks
Definition: This type of attack involves introducing excessive illegitimate packets or data into a network to disrupt normal operations.
Mechanism: Often seen in wireless communication, where noise or interference is introduced deliberately.
Impact on Availability: Legitimate communications are interrupted, causing a service to appear unavailable.
6. Network Interception and Manipulation
Definition: This includes attacks where the traffic is intercepted, modified, or rerouted.
Mechanism: Examples include ARP poisoning or DNS spoofing, which mislead users from accessing legitimate sites or services.
Impact on Availability: Services become unavailable when users are redirected to malicious sites or wrong destinations.
7. Physical Attacks on Infrastructure
Definition: Physical attacks include tampering with or destroying physical hardware like servers or network devices.
Mechanism: Such attacks require physical access to infrastructure.
Impact on Availability: The destruction or damage of hardware can directly take services offline, leading to a loss in availability.
8. Malware with Destructive Payloads
Definition: Certain malware is designed with payloads specifically intended to damage or destroy data.
Mechanism: This can include wiping disks, corrupting files, or altering configurations to make systems defunct.
Impact on Availability: Until systems are restored, availability is compromised due to the destruction caused.
9. Software Bugs and Exploits
Definition: Exploitation of bugs can crash systems or applications, hindering service availability.
Mechanism: By triggering exceptions or using exploit techniques to crash programs or systems.
Impact on Availability: This ensures service denial until bugs are fixed or systems restarted.
As we see, the Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are most commonly associated with compromising availability. They are specifically engineered to prevent legitimate users from gaining access to a service by overwhelming it with fake requests.
For effective prevention and mitigation, employing strategies like network monitoring, intrusion detection systems, and load balancers are crucial. Additionally, ensuring physical security for infrastructure and timely updates/patches for software can help protect against exploitation and maintain availability.
If you need further exploration into any of these topics or additional examples, feel free to ask! @username