Post #6-Network Security

 

Pings can be used to do a ping of death. The ping of death is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack that occurs when an attacker crashes or freezes a computer by targeting them with oversized data packets. Another common attack is an ICMP flood attack which is another DoS attack where the attacker sends a large number of ICMP packets to overwhelm the victim’s computer.

The first threat that I will be mentioning is email spam. It is a type of unsolicited communication that is sent in a large volume. They can be annoying and can contain malicious links. Computers are vulnerable to this threat because of the way people often communicate in the modern world. Then those attackers see a way to exploit since so many people are online emailing. One thing we can do is to use spam detection to help minimize these threats.
“Spam detection compares the non-spam and spam emails, which will help to avoid the spam mail from receiving into the user's inbox (Rohokale).”

     The second and last threat I would like to describe is phishing. “Phishing attacks are indiscriminate email attacks requesting that the recipient completes an attached form (perhaps saying that there is a problem with their bank account) (Neil).” Computers are vulnerable since many people are not aware what to look for when an email viewed in the inbox. Many people assume it is a legitimate email with legitimate content. Best bet is to scroll to the link in an email and wait for a pop up to occur and research the site before clicking the link itself. That is one of the tricks attackers can use to fool an email recipient. People’s information can be stolen if it is a malicious site. Best way to combat this is to do some research on cyber phishing via articles and watch Youtube videos containing people who instruct you on what to look for when you get a suspicious link or email.