Top 10 Most Probable Ways a Company Can Be Hacked

 

Top 10 ways 

1. Social engineering: More than 90% of attacks originate from social engineering. Attackers target human nature instead of technical systems, and using techniques like phishing, vishing, smishing, and quishing trick users into clicking malicious links, sharing passwords, or downloading malware.

2. Programming bugs: Weaknesses or flaws in a program's code can be exploited by bad actors to gain unauthorized access into organizations or take control of systems. Such vulnerabilities frequently arise from coding errors, poor security practices, or out-of-date software.  

3. Authentication attacks: Authentication attacks target systems that are used to authenticate user identities, typically via compromise of user credentials or through exploitation of vulnerabilities in authentication mechanisms. These attacks involve use of techniques like brute force, multifactor authentication (MFA) bypass, credential stuffing, and credential phishing

    4. Malicious instruction/scripting: Any programming or macro language or automation language can be abused for malicious purposes. For example, PowerShell, a tool already present on all Windows machines, can be programmed or instructed to do bad things — attackers deliver victims a script using social engineering. If they click on it, it compromises their system.

5. Data malformation: Data malformation is where bad actors deliberately alter or corrupt data in a way that causes a system to misinterpret or misbehave. For example, by exploiting inconsistencies in how data is handled or validated, attackers can trigger things like buffer overflows, leading to unauthorized access, system crashes, or other security breaches.

6. Human error or misconfiguration: Let's say you meant to send an email containing sensitive corporate data to Robert , but you sent it to Roberto instead. This is a common human error, leading to data breaches. Another common human mistake is misconfigurations or granting overly permissive permissions. For example, 31% of Amazon S3 buckets are open to the public. If someone stumbles upon the URL, it can lead to data breach.

7. Eavesdropping or man-in-the-middle attacks: In an eavesdropping attack, a threat actor secretly listens in on data being exchanged such as login credentials, a password hash, or sensitive information. Man-in-the-middle (MitM) is a type of attack where threat actors not only intercept but also manipulate the data being transferred, making it appear as legitimate to both the sender and the receiver.

8. Side-channel attacks: Side-channel attacks are attacks that exploit unintended information leaks from a system, such as variations in power consumption, electromagnetic emissions, or timing differences. For example, Spectre was a vulnerability that affected a wide range of processors like Intel, IBM, and AMD. Hackers could access sensitive data by manipulating speculative execution, a feature designed to improve processor performance.

9. Brute-force or computational attacks: A brute-force attack is where bad actors leverage computational power and try a combination of inputs such as passwords or encryption keys until they find the correct one. Weak or short passwords in particular are highly vulnerable to brute-force attacks. For example, it takes only 37 seconds for hackers to crack a simple, eight-digit password using brute-force techniques.

10. Insider attacks: Insider attacks occur when trusted employees, business partners, or contractors misuse their access to systems or data for malicious purposes. This involves theft of data, system sabotage, or intentional leakage of sensitive data. Insider attacks are particularly dangerous because perpetrators already have insider access, and detecting their malicious actions can be difficult.