Terms related with Cyber Security

Dear Readers,

Cyber crime or cyber terrorism is certainly a lurking elm of a potential peril, a ticking time bomb as the lines between the real and virtual world are narrowed day-by-day with cyberspace being coupled more tightly with our human existence. 

Cyber crime is all over the current affairs of this world with Ransomware and Judy Malware making headline worldwide, this makes it a potential trending topic that you might encounter in upcoming banking recruitment exam. You can face questions related to cyberspace or cyber security in Computers or descriptive section of the NICL AO, SBI PO exams. Read further to become familiar with some very distinctive and important terms related to cyberspace:

Authentication: Procedures to verify that a network user is who he or she claims to be. A simple and common authentication procedure is a password. 

Adware: Adware can mean the software that automatically generates advertisements in a program that is otherwise free, such as an online video game. But in this context, it more commonly means a kind of spyware that tracks your browsing habits covertly to generate those ads.

Botnet: a set of bots installed (usually surreptitiously) on a number of victimized computers (zombies or slaves) to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks or to send spam.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS): A cyber crime technique in which an Internet site, a server, or a router is flooded with more requests for data than the site or device can respond to or process.

Consequently, legitimate traffic cannot access the site and the site is in effect shut down.  A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is different from a DDoS attack. The DoS attack typically uses one computer and one Internet connection to flood a targeted system or resource. The DDoS attack uses multiple computers and Internet connections to flood the targeted resource. DDoS attacks are often global attacks, distributed via botnets.

Encryption: The scrambling of information so that it is unreadable to those who do not have the

code to unscramble it. 

Hacktivism (hactivism): The act of hacking, or breaking into a computer system, for a politically or socially motivated purpose. The individual who performs an act of hacktivism is said to be a hacktivist.

Keystroke logging: Keystroke logging is the tracking of which keys are pressed on a computer (and which touchscreen points are used). It is, simply, the map of a computer/human interface. 

Pharming: Misdirecting traffic from one Website to a Website controlled by a criminal hacker by altering the domain name system or by altering configuration files on a victim’s computer. 

Phishing: Tricking someone into giving you their personal information, including login information and passwords, credit card numbers, and so on by imitating legitimate companies, organizations, or people online. Phishing’s often done via fake emails or links to fraudulent websites.

Spamming: Spam is electronic junk mail also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE) is the practice of sending unwanted email messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.

Spoofing: It is a type of scam where an intruder attempts to gain unauthorized access to a user’s system or information by pretending to be the user. The main purpose is to trick the user into releasing sensitive information.

Spyware: Spyware is a type of malware that is programmed to hide on a target computer or server and send back information to the master server, including login and password information, bank account information, and credit card numbers.

Worm: The program which spreads through a computer system or network by replicating (like a virus) but without integrating itself into other executable code.

Zero day attack/exploit: A zero-day attack is a previously unknown vulnerability in a system. A zero-day attack is the first such use of the exploit by a cracker.

       

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