What type of attack involves the attacker sending too much data to a service or application that typically results in the attacker gaining administrative access to the system?

Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is an attack meant to shut down a machine or network, making it inaccessible to its intended users. DoS attacks accomplish this by flooding the target with traffic, or sending it information that triggers a crash. In both instances, the DoS attack deprives legitimate users (i.e. employees, members, or account holders) of the service or resource they expected.

Victims of DoS attacks often target web servers of high-profile organizations such as banking, commerce, and media companies, or government and trade organizations. Though DoS attacks do not typically result in the theft or loss of significant information or other assets, they can cost the victim a great deal of time and money to handle.

There are two general methods of DoS attacks: flooding services or crashing services. Flood attacks occur when the system receives too much traffic for the server to buffer, causing them to slow down and eventually stop. Popular flood attacks include:

  • Buffer overflow attacks – the most common DoS attack. The concept is to send more traffic to a network address than the programmers have built the system to handle. It includes the attacks listed below, in addition to others that are designed to exploit bugs specific to certain applications or networks
  • ICMP flood – leverages misconfigured network devices by sending spoofed packets that ping every computer on the targeted network, instead of just one specific machine. The network is then triggered to amplify the traffic. This attack is also known as the smurf attack or ping of death.
  • SYN flood – sends a request to connect to a server, but never completes the handshake. Continues until all open ports are saturated with requests and none are available for legitimate users to connect to.

Other DoS attacks simply exploit vulnerabilities that cause the target system or service to crash. In these attacks, input is sent that takes advantage of bugs in the target that subsequently crash or severely destabilize the system, so that it can’t be accessed or used.

An additional type of DoS attack is the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack occurs when multiple systems orchestrate a synchronized DoS attack to a single target. The essential difference is that instead of being attacked from one location, the target is attacked from many locations at once. The distribution of hosts that defines a DDoS provide the attacker multiple advantages:

  • He can leverage the greater volume of machine to execute a seriously disruptive attack
  • The location of the attack is difficult to detect due to the random distribution of attacking systems (often worldwide)
  • It is more difficult to shut down multiple machines than one
  • The true attacking party is very difficult to identify, as they are disguised behind many (mostly compromised) systems

Modern security technologies have developed mechanisms to defend against most forms of DoS attacks, but due to the unique characteristics of DDoS, it is still regarded as an elevated threat and is of higher concern to organizations that fear being targeted by such an attack.

An input validation attack is any malicious action against a computer system that involves manually entering strange information into a normal user input field. Input validation attacks take place when an attacker purposefully enters information into a system or application with the intentions to break the system's functionality.

Sometimes a web application can cause a malicious attack or input validation attack all while running in the background. However in most cases, it is an individual putting the data into the system and corrupting its performance.

When information is input by an application or user as part of a user input attack it can make a computer vulnerable to unauthorized changes and destructive commands. The type of unsafe data entered into a system can range from simple words to malicious code to massive scale information attacks. The best form of defense against these attacks is to test for input validation prior to deploying an application.

Types of input validation attacks

A few common types of input validation attacks include:

  • Buffer overflow- This is a type of attack that sends too much information for a system to process, causing a computer or network to stop responding. A buffer overflow might also cause excess information to take up memory that was not intended for it, sometimes even overwriting memory.
  • Canonicalization attacks- A canonicalization attack takes place when someone changes a file directory path that has digital permissions to access parts of a computer in order to allow access to malicious parties that use this unauthorized entry to steal sensitive information or make unapproved changes.
  • XSS attacks- Also called cross-site scripting, these attacks involve placing a malicious link in an innocuous place, like a forum, which contains most of a valid URL with a dangerous script embedded. An unsuspecting visitor might trust the site they are on and not worry that a comment or entry on the site contains a virus.
  • SQL injection attacks- SQL injection attacks involve taking a public URL and adding SQL code to the end to try to gain access to sensitive information. An attacker might enter code into a field commanding a computer to do something like copy all of the contents of a database to the hacker, authenticate malicious information, reveal hidden entries in a database or delete information without consent.

This was last updated in June 2019

Continue Reading About input validation attack

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  • How to prevent SQL injection attacks by validating user input
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  • SQL Injection Attacks Represent Two-Third of All Web App Attacks

What type of attack involves the attacker inserting a client side script into the web page?

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is an attack that involves the attacker inserting script code into a web page so that it is then processed and executed by a client system when a user browses that web page.

What type of attack involves the attacker modifying the source IP address of the packet quizlet?

Header manipulation attacks modify the data contained in Internet protocol (IP) packets. Specifically, they modify information in packet headers to bypass network security controls or probe for information about a network.

What type of attack involves the attacker modifying the source IP address of the packet?

In an IP spoofing attack, an attacker will send IP packets from a spoofed IP address to hide their true identity. Attackers most often use IP address spoofing attacks in DoS attacks that overwhelm their target with network traffic.

What type of attack can a hacker perform that involves injecting?

One of the most common ways an attacker can deploy a cross-site scripting attack is by injecting malicious code into a comment or a script that could automatically run. For example, they could embed a link to a malicious JavaScript in a comment on a blog.