Post 6 - Network Security

This post builds on a previous assignment here that explored using ping commands. This post goes deeper into the topic revealing how pinging can be used for attacks and other vulnerabilities to computer security.
Earlier in the course we became familiar with using ping commands, and while it can be used for troubleshooting and connectivity testing, it can also be used by bad actors to launch attacks on critical websites like government and private company systems. One of the more types of using pinging to attack is called ping-flooding or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. As the name suggest an attacker tries to overwhelm the resources of a system by flooding it with pings. If all the available bandwidth resources are being taken up by pings, no other users can get on. While this type of attack has been used to take down sites like Ebay, Yahoo, and ETrade (Kumar, 2006) I have also seen posts on Reddit about using ping floods to block scammers using Voice over IP connections for telephone scams. The DDoS is typically done with an automated program that can control the number of pings and the size of the packets (Crelin, 2018) (sending large packets is another type of DDoS referred to as a ping bomb.

Ping attacks are not the only threats systems are vulnerable to. Phishing is another common security risk modern systems face. “Phishing is the process of trying to steal user information over the Internet by claiming they are a trusted entity and thus access and steal the victim's data” (Kadhim, 2019) such as passwords or credit card information. Phishing can happen to individuals or at work. Just recently an email was sent from my “corporate office” about a holiday gift. If you clicked the link it would ask you to enter your user name and password to redeem your gift, which would potentially give the person on the other end access to the company system. While phishing is detected and prevented by several methods such as blacklisted websites and data mining, one of the most important keys to prevention is user awareness and intelligence. It is very difficult for a phishing email to completely replicate a legitimate system. For example in the example I recently experienced there were several typos in the email body, and if you hovered over the link you could see that the actual hyperlink didn’t lead to accompany domain. Checking domain name is an established method for preventing new phishing sites that have not been blacklisted by prevention software (Kadhim, 2019), but that still relies heavily on user intuition.

References:

Crelin, J. (2018). Denial-of-service attack. Salem Press Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=90558289&site=eds-live&scope=site

Kumar, S. (2006, January 10). PING attack – How bad is it? Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404805001926.

Huda Yousif Kadhim, Karim Hashim Al-saedi, & Mustafa Dhiaa Al-Hassani. (2019). Mobile Phishing Websites Detection and Prevention Using Data Mining Techniques. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, (10), 205. https://doi-org.proxy-library.ashford.edu/10.3991/ijim.v13i10.10797