Essay Sample on Cyber Attacks: 3 Major Threats from Nation-States, Cybercriminals and Insiders

Introduction

Cyber-attacks are attacks by individuals or organizations to breach the information system of another organization or individual via cyberspace to acquire sensitive data or to cause disruptions deliberately. There are three main threat attack actors, namely: nation-state, cybercriminals, and the insider threat.A nation-state or state-sponsored attackers usually target government agencies, critical infrastructure facilities, and essential businesses whereby they leak sensitive and confidential information or cause interruptions in companies leading to large amounts of data and revenue loss. Nation-state attacks lead to the fall of the economy since most activities are IT-based, like the development of infrastructure, which is usually the intention. Cybercriminals are teams or individuals with technological skills to alter or acquire sensitive information from a company or individuals. They possess high technology electronics and are well funded, which enables them to do their job. Cybercriminals use the information for monetary gain by extortion from you or trade stolen data through dark web markets. Others use it as a power against the companies or individuals to achieve other non-monetary goals. Lastly, the insider threat emerges from employees, former employees, business partners, and contractors of an organization who have information from inside about organizations' data, computer systems, and security practices. Most insider threats arise from employee negligence, whereby they send confidential information to the wrong recipient or losing storage drives, which may land to the public containing crucial information. Other insider threats arise from employees who leak data to seek revenge against the organization while others steal proprietary assets for sale.

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In late November 2014, a group addressing itself as he Guardian of Hope hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment. The hackers leaked information to the journalists, followed by a threat to commit terrorist acts against movie theaters. They demanded that Sony was to cancel the release of a planned version of a The Interview, whereby two Americans assassinate North Korean leader, which they viewed as an act of terror and promised consequences upon its release. Sony's attempt to release the movie made it vulnerable for itself, given the relationship between the USA and Korea, and making it worse; the movie was about their leader's assassination.

The attackers used several methods of attack. The 1st method was malware, which is a harmful software such as viruses. Once it is on your computer, it takes control of the machine, monitoring all activities to send confidential information to attackers' computers silently. The 2nd method used was the worm tool, which replicates itself to spread to other machines which have been used some months before the attack, which extracts and removes data and removes evidence of the attack.

Hacktivists are also threat attack actors who mostly attack websites since they are the organizations highly facing aspects. They use malware software to take control of many computers, followed by the initiation of DDoS (distributed denial of service). Using this method is more reliable for hackers since they appear from different IP addresses around the world hindering determination of the source of an attack

Work Cited

Finklea, Kristin M., and Catherine A. Theohary. "Cybercrime: conceptual issues for congress and US law enforcement." Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2015.