Introduction to Cyber Security

Classification of Cyber Crimes

The cyber criminal could be internal or external to the organization facing the cyber attack. Based on this fact, the cyber crime could be categorized into two types:

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  Insider Attack: An attack to the network or the computer system by some person with authorized system access is known as insider attack. It is generally performed by dissatisfied or unhappy inside employees or contractors. The motive of the insider attack could be revenge or greed. It is comparitively easy for an insider to perform a cyber attack as he is well aware of the policies, processes, IT architecture and wealness of the security system. Moreover, the attacker have an access to the network. Therefore it is comparatively easy for a insider attacker to steel sensitive information, crash the network, etc. In most of the cases the reason for insider attack is when a employee is fired or assigned new roles in an organization, and the role is not reflected in the IT policies. This opens a vernability window for the attacker. The insider attack could be prevented by planning and installing an Internal intrusion detection systems (IDS) in the organization.
  
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  External Attack: When the attacker is either hired by an insider or an external entity to the organization, it is known as external attack. The organization which is a victim of cyber attack not only faces financial loss but also the loss of reputation. Since the attacker is external to the organization, so these attackers usually scan and gathering information.An expreicend network/security administrator keeps regual eye on the log generated by the firewalls as extertnal attacks can be traced out by carefully analysinig these firewall logs. Also, Intrusion Detection Systems are installed to keep an eye on external attacks.
  

The cyber attacks can also be classified as structure attacks and unstructured attacks based on the level of maturity of the attacker. Some of the authors have classified these attacks as a form of external attacks but there is precedence of the cases when a structured attack was performed by an internal employee. This happens in the case when the competitor company wants the future strategy of an organization on certain points. The attacker may strategically gain access to the company as an employee and access the required information.

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  Unstructured attacks: These attacks are generally performed by amatures who don‟t have any predefined motives to perform the cyber attack. Usually these amatures try to test a tool readily available over the internet on the network of a random company.
  
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  Structure Attack: These types of attacks are performed by highly skilled and experienced people and the motives of these attacks are clear in their mind. They have access to sophisticated tools and technologies to gain access to other networks without being noticed by their Intrusion Detection Systems(IDSs). Moreover, these attacker have the necessary expertise to develop or modify the existing tools to satisfy their purpose. These types of attacks are usually performed by professional criminals, by a country on other rival countries, politicians to damage the image of the rival person or the country, terrorists, rival companies, etc.
  

Cyber crimes have turned out to be a low-investment, low-risk business with huge returns. Now-a-days these structured crimes are performed are highly organized. There is a perfect hierarchical organizational setup like formal organizations and some of them have reached a level in technical capabilities at par with those of developed nation. They are targeting large financial organizations, defence and nuclear establishments and they are also into online drugs trading.



Figure 1 : Hierarchical Organisational Structure
The role of all the people in the hierarchy reamin changing and it is based on the oppourtinity. If a hacker who have hacked sesetive data from an organization may use it for financially exploiting the organisation himself. In case, the hacker himself have the technical expertise for it, he will do it himself, otherwise he may find a buyer who is intrested in that data and have the technical expertize.
There are some cyber criminals offers on-demand and service. The person, organization or a country may contact these cyber criminals for hacking an organization to gain access to some sensetive data , or create massive denial-of –service attack on their compititors. Based on the demand of the customer the hackers write malware, virus, etc to suit their requirements. An organizaiton effected by a cyber attack, not only faces finincial loss, but its repuration is also adversly affected, and the compitititor organization will definatly benefited by it.

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