Six Popular Ways in Which Hackers Attack Your Website

Hackers and hacking have become so common that today you almost don’t need to explain what hacking is, even to most laymen.

Hackers can hack a website or system or network, which would eventually lead to the stealing of data, shutting down of the website, businesses incurring big losses etc. Hackers target all kinds of websites and organizations, and execute their attacks in many ways. This is why we use all kinds of security systems- antivirus software, free malware cleaner etc- to secure our websites from hacking attempts.

Here’s a look at how hackers carry out attacks upon websites, using different techniques:

The DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attack

This is one of the most favorite techniques used by hackers; a DDoS attack, as the name itself suggests, is all about denying service. Hackers ensure that a server’s services or machine’s services are made unavailable to its users. Once the system is offline, hackers would compromise the entire website or specific functions of the website and take advantage of the same.

Hackers mostly carry out DDoS attacks by sending tons of URL requests to a website or webpage, all in a small span of time. Thus there happens a bottlenecking for the server and the CPU would run out of resources.

The RCE (Remote Code Execution) Attack

Hackers exploit vulnerabilities to carry out attacks and execute malicious code remotely to take complete control of an affected system or website. Hackers could target vulnerable components of a website, including libraries, remote directories on a server which aren’t being monitored, frameworks, software modules etc and attack through scripts, malware, small command lines that extract information etc.

The Injection Attack

Injections attacks happen when hackers exploit security flaws that exist in the SQL Database, SQL libraries, or even the operating system itself. Users may unknowingly open files that seem to be credible and which would contain hidden commands (or “injections”) and thereby allow hackers gain unauthorized access to private data- credit card data, social security numbers, other financial data etc.

The XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Attack

A hacker sends an application, URL “get request” or file packet to the web browser window bypassing the validation processes and thereby triggers an XXS script, which makes the website users believe that the webpage which they are viewing is legitimate even though in reality it’s compromised. Thus they would be made to enter personal details- credit card info or other sensitive personal info, which the hacker would steal and misuse.

DNS Cache Poisoning
Also known as DNS spoofing, DNS Cache Poisoning happens when attackers identify vulnerabilities in a DNS (Domain Name System) and exploit the same to divert traffic from the legit servers to a fake website and/or server. This kind of an attack involves old cache data which is “toxic” and which you think doesn’t exist any longer on your system. Such attacks can also spread and replicate themselves from DNS to DNS, thereby “poisoning” everything that comes in its path.

The Social Engineering Attack

Social engineering attacks are very common these days; using different methods hackers would trick users into divulging confidential information and then they would use the same to attack a website (or organization) or to cause harm to the person himself. The hacker could make use of common online interactions- emails, chats, calls, social media site interactions etc- to carry out such attacks.