22 June 2025
In this assignment, you will research and analyze different types of cyberattacks that target the availability of systems, networks, or data, which is one of the core principles of cybersecurity. Known as “Attacks on Availability,” these are incidents where malicious actors attempt to disrupt access to critical resources, making them inaccessible to users. Such attacks can include Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), ransomware, and other forms that focus on hindering legitimate access.
Cyberattacks have become the biggest issue in the world of technology. Identifying different types of cyberattacks and how they are happening is crucial to understanding and preventing them. However, some criminals have become intelligent in creating quick and simple attacks.
Attack on Availability
Attack on availability is defined by an article as a form of data poisoning that changes the training data of machine learning modules (Yu et. al., 2022). These modules begin to have the inability to properly learn the data thus making the data unavailable. The attack made this possible by creating a shortcut for the module to learn. However, the shortcut was simple and contained a slight change so that the learning of the real data became obsolete (Yu et. al., 2022). The authors found that these changes are “linearly separable”, meaning that the changes formed a simple pattern that could be easily identified with a linear (straight) plane. This is visible using a 2-d visual program, T-SNE, which shows the clusters of data. They could separate the data points into different labels and were able to identify the poisoned data.
Types of Cyberattacks
There are many methods of cyberattacks used today. One attack is called “Social Engineering Attack” where the attacker targets vulnerable individuals through manipulation tactics to reveal personal information. This is common with the elderly and those with little understanding or usage of technology. “Computer Network Attacks” are done through the attacker “manipulating, corrupting, rejecting, and destroying information in computers and computer networks in order to gain control of the computer/computer network” (Aslan et. al., 2023. 23). A final example, “bots and botnets”, is a software program that has learned to mimic human behaviors or other information through the repetition of tasks. While they are used for some positive instances, like customer service lines, the negative instances include taking control of computers, sending spam, infiltrating accounts, etc. (Aslan et. al., 2023).
Common Technique Used in Attacks
One of the most common types of attacks to this day is identified as “phishing attacks”. This is online fraud committed by scammers who are sending emails, or other forms of messages, identifying themselves as a well-known source (Aslan et. al., 2023). This could be your specific bank or government agencies. The goal is for the scammer to use the manipulation tactics similar to those in social engineering attacks to convince the victim to give out sensitive information. Personally, I had a text message very recently stating that I had an outstanding parking fee and I was to pay the DMV immediately. The sender’s fake email address was listed as their name. There was a link attached to the bottom of the message after claiming my license will be suspended or no longer valid if I do not pay. This is a prime example of phishing. If I had clicked that link, the attacker may have been able to access my information from my phone. The government agencies will never send text messages demanding money. However, there are going to be vulnerable victims who are scared into complying with these messages, unknowingly giving the individual access to their personal information.
Conclusion
In conclusion, cyberattacks have become a daily issue in the world of technology. Individuals need to be educated to learn the potential dangers of the internet world and how to avoid being the next victim. Organizations are also in danger of their data having been tampered with for malicious intent. While eradicating cyberattacks is near impossible, it is still important to identify and respond to these attacks as soon as possible to prevent any more damage that had been done.
References
Aslan, Ö., Aktuğ, S. S., Ozkan-Okay, M., Yilmaz, A. A., & Akin, E. (2023). A Comprehensive Review of Cyber Security Vulnerabilities, Threats, Attacks, and Solutions. Electronics, 12(6), 1333. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12061333
Yu, D., Zhang, H., Chen, W., Yin, J., & Liu, T. Y. (2022, August). Availability attacks create shortcuts. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (pp. 2367-2376).