Category: Cyber-attacks

DNS tunneling attack explained in detail

The purpose of DNS tunneling attack

DNS tunneling is a sort of Domain Name System attack, as the name implies. It employs a client-server mechanism to push malware across a tunnel. In addition, it is a black hat approach for establishing a covert conduit into a victim’s machine or network.

The channel constructed allows embedding a malicious payload within DNS queries, allowing attackers to take advantage of DNS traffic’s largely unconstrained flow—especially in settings where practically all other communication is controlled.

DNS tunneling – How to detect it?

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The Importance of Using a Firewall 

What is the purpose of a Firewall?

A firewall acts as a sentinel, detecting and reacting to dangers. First, it keeps an eye on traffic to look for unusual activity, malware, or unauthorized access attempts. Then it bans communications from unknown sources and dubious sources.

How does it work?

A firewall generates a security filter to manage traffic, whether it be hardware, software, or both. It thoroughly examines the traffic at each computer’s entrance point (ports). This is because communication occurs with external devices through such ports.

In order to perform activities such as filtering, allowing, and blocking, we need to set firewalls. They also examine data packets delivered across networks for attack vectors, malicious code, and other potential threats. After a firewall has reviewed traffic, it will only accept the inbound connections that you have selected to receive, as well as those that are deemed safe. Data packets and connections that are potentially dangerous will be refused. To put it another way, it will accept only trustworthy sources (IP addresses). In addition, let’s not forget that IP addresses are identifiers of sources and computers.

Key Advantages of a Firewall

In this computer era, we consider that the use of a Firewall is mandatory. There are many benefits to implementing it, some of which are:

  • Prevent initial malware and phishing
  • Provide monitor Traffic
  • Find malware devices on your network
  • Better privacy and security

Different Types of Firewalls

We can deploy different types of firewalls depending on the needs of the users. We’ll take a look at the most popular of them.

  1. Software Firewall provides more granular control, letting you use one function or program while blocking others. Unfortunately, this type can eat up a lot of your system’s resources, notably RAM and CPU.
  2. Hardware Firewall  acts as a gateway between the internet and internal networks, preventing traffic queries and data packets from entering the private network from unknown sources.
  3. Packet filtering entails analyzing and distributing a tiny amount of data in accordance with the filter’s specifications.
  4. Proxy service is a network security mechanism that protects users by filtering communications at the application layer.
  5. Stateful inspection is a type of dynamic packet filtering that looks at active connections to see which network packets should be let over the Firewall.
  6. Next-generation firewall (NGFW) improves on the basics by adding features such as deep packet inspection, encrypted traffic inspection, intrusion prevention technology, antivirus, and so on.

Conclusion

You now appreciate the importance of a Firewall. It has the ability to allow teams to focus on other activities while also establishing a secure proactive, rather than reactive, network experience for everyone in your company.

DDoS attack – Everything you need to know

What does a DDoS attack mean?

Distributed Denial of Service, which is for short, called DDoS, is a cyber-attack. It’s performed to disrupt essential targets like a network, system, or server. That is achieved by overwhelming them with lots of traffic, which is coming from many devices. The word “distributed” refers to the many various sources that are used to achieve the attack. When the target is down, the DDoS attack is complete. The outcome is simply not allowing any user to access it.

The DDoS attack can be of several kinds. Techniques can modify, or they could be mixed and accomplish a stronger hit to the target. Overall, any DDoS attack operates by infecting devices. If there are more connected to the Internet, more of them are going to attack the victim. This happens even globally and from any kinds of compromised sources like computers, servers, IoT devices, wearables. The target is not able to handle the traffic. It becomes sluggish and eventually becomes completely drowned.

Signs of DDoS attack

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​Ping of Death – Definition

Ping of Death. It sounds as dangerous as it is. It can bring down your server and keep it that way for a long time using a simple tool like the ping command. A bit of modification of the packets of data and your server might have a serious problem.

​What is Ping of Death?

Ping of Death or PoD is a Denial of Service attack (DoS attack) that uses a vulnerability connected to the ping command and the packet size. The attackers use the ping command and send data packets that are oversized. The normal size of an IPv4 packet of data, with its IP header, is 65 535 bytes, so everything that is above, like 65 536 bytes, will cause problems.

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Most popular DNS attack types.

All types of cyberattacks are threats to take seriously. But DNS attacks directed to hit your DNS (domain name system) are like lethal RIP bullets impacting your system. Your online business can be fully damaged!

​DNS cache poisoning.

DNS Cache Poisoning (DNS Spoofing) hits through the DNS resolver servers. They can temporarily save a copy of the DNS records related to domains in their cache memory. Those records get cached the time established in their time-to-live (TTL).

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Smurf attack explained.

Cyber attacks are to be taken seriously. Even cute names can hide deadly poison. Today, let’s be aware of the smurf attack.

​What is a Smurf attack?

A Smurf attack is a type of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. It took its name from the malware used to implement it, the Smurf malware. It targets computer networks to make them unavailable by exploiting vulnerabilities of the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).

Impact of the Smurf DDoS Attack

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5 Famous Cyber attacks.

Cyber crime never stops. The list of cyber attacks that have badly hit organizations worldwide is sadly long. Even during the hardest moments in this pandemic, the virus stopped the world, but not cyber crime.

Let’s take a look at 5 painfully famous cyber attacks.

Mirai botnet attack (2016). 

A DDoS attack hit Dyn’s servers, a big provider of DNS infrastructure for the Internet, strongly. It took down the Internet in wide regions of the USA and Europe. Twitter, CNN, Reddit, Netflix, and more known websites went down.

Attackers used a peculiar weapon, the Mirai botnet. The botnet army for attacking was not made up of infected computers but Internet of things (IoT) devices. Dyn calculated around 100 thousand malicious endpoints involved in the attack.

5 DNS attack types you should know

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​What is a Botnet?

Have you heard the word Botnet? Sounds scary, doesn’t it? It is a network of infected devices that cybercriminals use for their malicious purposes. In the world, there are millions of infected devices, maybe even billions, and they are just a few clicks away from attacking their next target!

​What is Botnet?

A Botnet is a network of infected devices (a.k.a. hijacked devices or zombie computers) that cybercriminals first infect and later use for various cyberattacks, including DDoS attacks, SPAM spreading, phishing attacks, and more. The term Botnet is a combination of two words. The first is “bot” short of “robot”, which means an automated machine, that can perform a specific task. The second word is “net”, and it comes from “network” because here we are talking about multiple devices that can be triggered at once.

Signs your device could be part of a Botnet

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