Cyber-attacks

With information and data breaches of organizational and commercial associations generating headline news essentially every day, cyberattacks have become a reality of everyday life. Denial of Service (DoS), one of the most frequent and widespread types of digital threat, interferes with websites and other crucial online assets, rendering them inaccessible to potential consumers (Bertino, 2015, p. 6). According to Luan, Fu, and Xiao (2012), DoS attacks can manifest itself in a variety of ways, with some of the dangers concentrating primarily on the fundamental server infrastructure while others target the flaws in system communication and application protocols. Unlike other forms of cyber-attacks, which are normally launched to build-up a long-term perch and interfere with important and delicate information, DoS threats do not endeavor to break or breach personal security framework. Rather, these threat attempts to cause personal website and online servers inaccessible to potential users. Also, DoS threat is applied as a smokescreen for different malicious exercise and brings down security systems such as web application firewalls (Luan, Fu, & Xiao, 2012, pgs. 354-360). In this paper, we will discuss the need for cyber urgency due to the current DoS attacks; explain the underlying effects of DoS attacks on both public and private sectors with DoS current incident examples, and finally, the paper will contain DoS pictures to supplement our discussion.

The Need for Cyber Urgency

Denial of Service attack is one of the cyber threat currently under the radar of international agenda as it breaches and interferes with high profile business and organizational associations raising the fear of security failure which in turn endangers global economy. Due to this, government and business agencies around the global are searching for best cyber defense mechanism and strategies for example, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security Agency helps Europeans governmental agencies, financial institutions, telecom companies, internet providers and energy suppliers to be equipped with advanced techniques and strategies that prevent, detect and respond to cyber-attacks including DoS threats (“European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) - European Union website, the official EU website - European Commission”, n.d.).

Cyber-attack falls under two major categories; breach and interfere with information security and data sabotage. In information security breach, essential issues such as personal data, trade secrets, intellectual property rights, information related to bids, mergers and prices are the main target. Data sabotaging takes the form of denial of services (DoS) which mainly supplies the website services with spurious messages and tries to disable the arrangement and framework of the web services (Bertino, 2015, p. 6). In order to avoid commercial losses and prevent any form of public relation issues, government and business agencies are investing in security measures and procedures that detect and prevent DoS threats. This is attained by applying advanced and updated information technology measures such as protecting as server passwords, development of network security infrastructure, application of the latest security patches and having an organizational database on different web servers then only in application servers (Pilling, 2013, pgs. 14-18).

Current DoS events cause disruption of organizational operation, possible extortion, exposes the organization to regulatory measures, damages trust among customers and clients and causes negligence claims. For this reason, the agencies should determine the organizational or business security chains by evaluating the entire security chain to avoid vulnerability to attack, develop a well-established compliance plan to monitor potential DoS attack and prepare a legally needed disclosures for evaluating DoS risks and disclosing to customers and suppliers to maintain their trust (Pilling, 2013, pgs. 14-18). Additionally, the advancement of information technology and internet services which enhance communication services between systems raises the possibilities of DoS attack. The agencies should reduce much use of a machine to machine communication channel to avoid the possibilities of data and information misuse (Parsons, 2016, pgs. 2-3).

The Effects of DoS Attack on the Public and Private Sector

Denial of Service attack occurs when a working service becomes inaccessible. There are several reasons for unavailability, but it mainly refers to the system that can not adhere to the capacity overloads. Due to this, the threat causes a recommendable amount of damage to both the public and private sectors becoming a legitimate business concern. Denial of Service attack has a damaging effect on the organizational revenues and sends it into a full crisis mode. For example, a sophisticated DoS attack on HSBC online banking saw some of its trusted customers losing their accessibility to their online banking facilities just two days before the tax payment deadline in Britain (Rudgard, 2016). Furthermore, public and private sector’s reputation, revenue as well as conducting client and customer’s confidentiality are endangered following DoS attack. This leads to more resources spend on time and cost as the organization tries to recover from the attacks. For example, DoS attacks on Microsoft Xbox Live services lead to the breakdown of both play station network, and Xbox lives for more than one week. In this attack, the attackers utilized the continued weakness of security services of Microsoft services (Walton, 2017). Due to continued effects to both private and public sectors, the organizations are in need of advanced and high-level technology and security level that detect, prevent and protect not only the network system but also other essential devices that provide protections.

Distributed Denial of Service attack which means that the server may be overloaded, leading to the crashing of the server and the potential users may not be able to access website services.

Ultimate guide to Denial of Service (DoS) attack

Major Denial of Service (DoS) attack underway

References

Bertino, E. (2015). Denial-of-Service Attacks to UMTS. Computer, 48(2), 6-6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/mc.2015.42

European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) - European Union website, the official EU website - European Commission. European Union website, the official EU website - European Commission. Retrieved 17 April 2017, from https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/agencies/enisa_en

Luan, L., Fu, Y., & Xiao, P. (2012). An effective Denial of Service Attack Detection Method in Wireless Mesh Networks. Physics Procedia, 33, 354-360. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phpro.2012.05.074

Parsons, G. (2016). Standardizing Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communications. IEEE Communications Magazine, 54(12), 2-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/m-com.2016.7785878

Pilling, R. (2013). Global threats, cybersecurity nightmares and how to protect against them. Computer Fraud & Security, 2013(9), 14-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1361-3723(13)70081-2

Rudgard, O. (2016). HSBC online banking failure: What you need to know. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/bank-accounts/12129786/HSBC-online-banking-fails-again-after-succumbing-to-cyber-attack.html

Walton, M. (2017). Xbox Live pummeled by the DDoS attack; hacker group claims responsibility. Ars Technica. Retrieved 17 April 2017, from https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/hacker-group-phantom-squad-takes-down-xbox-live-in-ddos-attack/