NETWORK SECURITY THREATS AND ATTACKS
When a network is connected to the Internet to increase information sharing, communications, or productivity, the network is vulnerable to potential intrusions and attacks. Areas where potential intruders can enter may be dial-up access points, network connections, or misconfigured hosts.
Misconfigured hosts, frequently overlooked as points of network entry can be network systems that (1) use unprotected login accounts (such as guest accounts), (2) employ extensive trust in remote commands, (3) have illegal modems attached to them, or (4) use easy-to-break passwords (Cisco Systems, 1997). Security threats are classified as passive or active (Stallings & Van Slyke, 1998). Passive attacks involve eavesdropping on, or monitoring, transmissions without actually disturbing the network. The main concern of the point of vulnerability in the net-work is eavesdropping by another employee or unauthorized user. Data is transmitted in the form of frames or packets containing the source and destination address, and other related information. An eavesdropper can monitor the traffic of this information on the network. Individuals who attempt to read privileged data, perform unauthorized modification to data, or disrupt the system, on the other hand, carry out active attacks. There are many ways in which to attack the network security. These security attacks target the key elements of the network security architecture as aforementioned: