Cyberattacks and data breaches are on the rise, leading to over 343 million victims in 2023 alone. Incidents can range from advanced phishing and social engineering attacks to brute force and more sophisticated attacks.
As experts offering Miami cybersecurity services, we know that some of the best protection is to be proactive and learn how attacks occur in the first place.
Step-by-Step of a Basic Cyberattack
1. Exploit Vulnerabilities
Exploiting existing vulnerabilities is often the goal of attackers because they already know that the weakness exists and want to exploit it. For example, they can use the Log4Shell vulnerability and send a very specific string to the JNDI.
2. Evaluation
The string from step 1 is interpreted by the JNDI, which will send the malicious string of text to the LDAP server.
3. EL Injection
The LDAP will respond with the Expression Language (EL) injection payload, which is an expression that will be evaluated. Since the expression will include malicious code, the coding will exploit the EL interpreter and be allowed to run.
Depending on the string sent to the EL interpreter, it can do something such as:
- Execute malware
- Create a backdoor on your system
- Etc.
4. Execution
EL interpreters will execute the malicious code when it is interpreted, which, if the application is vulnerable, will allow an attacker to gain access to the system to some degree. Once the attacker has basic access, the exploit can then be used to further attack the servers.
If you’re not a network administrator or don’t understand the first thing about coding, the attack above may seem like one that no one can perform on your servers. Unfortunately, leveraging exploits is how hackers often perform attacks on small and large businesses across the world.
And if a foothold in the system is made, the hacker will use this elevated access to:
- Compromise the system further through what is known as privilege escalation, which means that the hacker will increase their access to more of the system.
- Discover further vulnerabilities in the system and learn if a more complex attack would be worth the time and expense.
- Harvest credentials that are stored in the system’s config files or the server’s memory.
Access to a system can lead to numerous attacks. A hacker may decide that their best monetary gain is from stealing a database full of credentials and payment information and selling it on the dark web.
Alternatively, a hacker may decide that your organization is large enough that they’ll deploy ransomware on the servers and cause your operations to grind to a halt.
Cyberattacks are faster and more complex than ever to execute. Some attacks can go months without a small business owner knowing, putting your company’s reputation at risk in the process.
If you’re a business owner, our company offers cybersecurity in Miami that starts from the basics of a hardware firewall to advanced monitoring and system hardening. Education and training are only part of the process to stop cyberattacks.
Our team will help your business take the proactive steps necessary to stop attackers in their tracks.