Types of Network Attacks Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Types of Network Attacks - Research Paper Example There is a variety of network attacks reported by researchers and information assurance professionals which keep targeting the government and private industry in a staggering number. It is a great concern of both the government and private industry to get rid of them by using the defense mechanisms identified by information assurance professionals in the past but significant research is still in continuation on this particular subject. It is reported that the number of attacks has doubled by two times since the introduction of World Wide Web due to which some say that the number of network attacks has become unprecedented now and the faster effective defense actions are taken against them, the better. The National Cyber Alert System for the US government and private sectors identified in recent past that all types of network attacks utilize security vulnerabilities (Yang, 1997) and nearly half of all the security threats from the Internet go unreported.It is increasingly important fo r the information assurance professionals and network administrators to acknowledge the nature of potential attacks on computer security so that it becomes easier afterwards to protect the network against such attacks. Spoofing is one such network attack which creates problems by causing a host or application to imitate the actions of another (The Linux Documentation Project, 2002). This is done by tracking IP addresses in network patches by the attacker who conventionally mimics another innocent host. After identifying the IP address by IP Address Spoofing, the attacker next proceeds to modifying or deleting important data (Microsoft TechNet, 2012). Following IP addresses means tracking or guessing TCP sequence number for example as in the case when a TCP connection from another host is tried to be mimicked by the attacker. This is why security vulnerabilities are created by the US-CERT to defend against such natured network attacks. The authenticity of various datagrams and comma nds is also advised to be verified by the teams responsible for detecting network attacks. This is identified as a very important step for protection against network attacks like spoofing. The attackers also try taking advantage of the element of predictability which is why it is advised to incorporate unpredictability into connection control systems so that TCP sequence numbers and myriad port addresses for example could not be tracked or mimicked through spoofing. Source addresses are also taken advantage of in spoofing due to which