Cyberattacks are growing more frequent and advanced with over 5 billion records breached just last year. But by understanding the most prevalent hacking techniques, we can make smarter security decisions to protect ourselves and get ahead of threats.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll break down today‘s 15 most common cyberattack types, recent high-profile examples, and—most importantly—specific actions you can take right now to avoid falling victim yourself.
Whether you‘re an everyday internet user looking to keep your home devices and accounts more secure, or an IT professional aiming to safeguard an enterprise from data breaches, consider this your handbook for outsmarting (and hopefully preventing) the next generation of cybercrime.
1. Phishing
Phishing uniquely leverages social engineering to trick unsuspecting users into handing over login credentials, financial information or access to corporate networks. 91% of cyber attacks start with phishing emails—often carefully crafted to convincingly pose as trusted contacts or brands.
| Year | # of Reported Phishing Sites | % Growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 241,324 | 22% |
| 2021 | 352,692 | 46% |
A common technique used today is spear phishing, targeting specific companies or roles with personalized messaging and spoofed addresses—last year the average cost of email compromise to victimized organizations doubled to over $500,000.
Put plainly, phishing works by preying upon human trust. But while promising messages or urgent calls for password resets may tempt us to let our guard down online, a little added skepticism goes a long way.
How you can prevent phishing attacks:
- Hover over embedded links to inspect their actual destinations before clicking
- Verify the domain name in emails matches the business it claims to represent
- Report suspicious unsolicited messages to your IT security team
- Never disclose credentials or personal details if asked over phone/email
Combined with secure email tools like DMARC, DKIM and SPF to validate authenticity, these four habits will stop 99% of phishing attempts in their tracks.
2. Ransomware
Ransomware is malicious software enabling cybercriminals to remotely lock systems or encrypt their contents to extort victims into paying hefty ransoms. In 2021 alone, ransomware attacks rose 105% as data and accessibility became increasingly weaponized.
The recent Black Basta group exemplifies the threat, utilizing ‘rented‘ access to enterprise networks via compromised credentials to manually spread across environments—locking hundreds of servers and databases to maximize disruption.
| Year | Global Ransomware Damage | % Growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $11.5 billion | NA |
| 2021 | $20 billion | 73.9% |
For businesses held digitally hostage by ransomware, over 70% end up paying, desperate to resume operations and avoid permanent data loss. But doing so further fuels cybercrime ecosystems and offers no guarantee. Prevention remains imperative.
How you can prevent ransomware attacks:
- Maintain offline backups of all critical data
- Install and update antimalware/antivirus software
- Restrict software installation permissions for users
- Immediately report detection of unfamiliar programs
Taking these steps makes networks infection resistant while ensuring business continuity if ransom demands aren’t met.
3. Supply Chain Attacks
Hackers are increasingly targeting third-party suppliers, vendors and partners to permeate the networks of major enterprises. By viewing organizations as interconnected supply chains instead of isolated units, threat actors uncover prime lateral pathways. Once in, they can stealthily expand access or deliver secondary payloads over months or years.
The recent attack on Kaseya MSP software crippled over 1,500 businesses globally with ransomware—initially compromising just a single managed services provider to detonate across downstream customers.
How you can prevent supply chain attacks:
- Continuously audit suppliers‘ and partners‘ security standards
- Isolate vendor access environments from production infrastructure
- Rapidly roll back changes and apply patches if vendors are compromised
- Monitor network traffic between internal systems and external parties
By reducing implicit trust and adding redundancies across integrations with third parties, we minimize rippling impacts of potential vendor breaches while ensuring they’re quickly detected if occurring.
4. Cryptojacking
Cryptojacking refers to attackers secretly hijacking smartphones or computers to mine cryptocurrencies using victims‘ electricity and computing power. Over a quarter of all malware attacks now feature this money-making functionality covertly running in the background as users unknowingly foot the bill.
Cybercriminals made over $1.6 billion from cryptojacking schemes in 2021 alone according to FBI estimates, incentivizing innovation of advanced stealth techniques to keep money-minting scripts operating undetected.
How you can prevent cryptojacking:
- Maintain comprehensive endpoint protection with web filtering
- Continuously patch and update operating systems and software
- Monitor CPU usage spikes across desktops and servers
By keeping devices secure and observing for performance anomalies—actively looking for signs of illicit activity—we make ourselves a more troublesome target for crypto-bandits.
5. Insider Threats
While external threats understandably capture lots of attention…the scariest cyber risks often come from within. Insider threats refer to employees, contractors or partners misusing legitimate access to networks, systems and data to sabotage, steal or profit.
145 million user records were compromised last year due to insider incidents, not external attacks. And over three-quarters of I.T. security professionals feel insider threats pose just as much risk to enterprises as malware or hacking—yet only 27% feel capable of detecting breaches by internal actors.
How you can prevent insider threats:
- Continuously audit user account permissions and activity
- Develop strict access control policies based on roles
- Rapidly disable access following staff departures
- Provide clear security guidelines to personnel
Though challenging to control, by limiting employees‘ reach to only necessary parts of infrastructure and keeping a close eye on access patterns—we deter rogue actions and speed incident response when they occur.
6. DDoS Attacks
DDoS attacks aim to overwhelm websites and critical network infrastructure by flooding targets with more requests than can be processed—denying service to everyone.
2021 set new records for DDoS devastation, with a 2.3 Tbps attack paralyzing a European internet service provider‘s entire national network. Using botnets of hundreds of thousands of compromised IoT devices, attackers coordinate colossal capacity to congest connections.
How you can prevent DDoS attacks:
- Maintain excess bandwidth and implement traffic throttling
- Continuously load balance incoming requests across global sites
- Filter request geolocation origins and block excessive traffic
- Ensure DDoS mitigation services are contracted with providers
By designing infrastructure to absorb surges and quickly isolate/restrict suspicious traffic, survival means playing defense long before attacks hit.
7. Cloud Threats
With organizations accelerating cloud adoption due to benefits like flexibility and cost savings, misconfigurations and oversights in these environments emerge as fresh attack vectors threatening data.
Hackers stole personal details of over 100 million Capital One credit card applicants by exploiting an improperly secured AWS S3 storage bucket. Meanwhile misconfigured databases and Kubernetes dashboards constantly expose terabytes of sensitive corporate information.
How you can prevent cloud threats:
- Use tools that automatically audit complex configurations
- Continuously validate encryption, access limitations and logging
- Develop and enforce compliance guidelines pre- and post-cloud migration
- Treat cloud providers as "shared responsibility"—security is still owned
The public cloud shifts responsibilities, but not accountability. Staying disciplined to lock down permissions, gain visibility and adhere to baseline controls makes cloud transitions secure.
8. Password Attacks
Despite growing adoption of multifactor authentication, weak passwords remain behind 81% of hacking breaches according to Verizon‘s research. Their ubiquity makes password attacks an easy route to accounts, infrastructure and data.
Given enough attempts via credential stuffing botnets, using breached username/password combos from third-party sites, cybercriminals can access networks without exploits. Brute forcing login pages continues to require minimal effort for substantial reward.
How you can prevent password attacks:
- Never reuse passwords across multiple accounts
- Require 15+ character randomly generated passwords
- Utilize central password management tools
- Enable multifactor authentication globally
- Set failed login attempt account lockouts
Strong unique passwords and secondary login checks make the difference between laughable and locktight protection.
9. IoT Botnets
Botnets represent coordinated armies of hundreds of thousands of compromised IoT devices like routers, video cameras and digital video recorders infected with malware and remotely controlled by hackers to conduct attacks.
The collective computing power of consumer IoT devices is massive—and the onslaught of new gadgets connecting daily expands potential botnet capacity exponentially. Mirai alone causes over 13,000 monthly IoT cyberattacks.
How you can prevent IoT botnets:
- Isolate IoT devices onto separate restricted networks
- Disable insecure default device logins and SSH access
- Continuously monitor traffic to/from IoT environments
While IoT manufacturers shoulder blame for products with paper-thin security standards, by isolating and observational vigilance we prevent enlisted bot recruits.
10. Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
Man-in-the-Middle attacks intercept communication between two parties to spy on or alter exchanges as an invisible middleman. Public Wi-Fi connections for instance expose extremely sensitive data to MitM scheming.
Over 25,000 MitM spying attempts occurred last year in the U.S. alone according to findings—all while users continue connecting to public networks unaware their browsing activity and entered credentials are freely observable.
How you can prevent man-in-the-middle attacks:
- Never conduct personal or work business over public Wi-Fi
- Utilize VPN connections to encrypt traffic end-to-end
- Inspect certificates to confirm connection security
- Enable Perfect Forward Secrecy where available
Securing tunnels and meticulously verifying identities defends against MitM attacks lurking across open environs.
11. SQL Injection Attacks
SQL injection refers to entering malicious code snippets into application login fields or URLs to gain unauthorized access to connected databases. Successful SQLi grants visibility or control over sensitive information.
Attackers used SQLi to access mortgage application data, social security numbers and credit scores from over 885 million Equifax users in 2017—one of the largest personal data breaches ever.
How you can prevent SQL injection attacks:
- Validate and sanitize all user-supplied application input
- Never concatenate strings into dynamic SQL queries
- Follow the principle of least privilege for all database accounts
- Continuously scan apps using web vulnerability scanners
By developing secure coding habits, limiting database permissions and aggressively detecting SQLi risks—equipped developers can counter injection threats targeting enterprise data stores.
12. Cross-Site Scripting Attacks
Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks inject malicious scripts targeting application users—often leveraged to steal session cookies containing user ID or authorization tokens to then access accounts.
Research shows over two-thirds of websites contain an XSS vulnerability directly threatening login credentials and personal user data. Widespread weaknesses continue enabling prevalent XSS attacks.
How you can prevent cross-site scripting attacks:
- Validate and filter untrusted user input on arrival
- Encode or escape untrusted data escaping output
- Set security headers like HSTS to prevent attacks
- Continuously scan apps using Acunetix or Burp Suite
By developing secure coding habits, employing protective measures programmatically and scanning continuously—we deny XSS the oversight it needs to access accounts.
13. Physical Access Breaches
While less common than cyber intrusions today, physically accessing secure premises, assets or data enables theft and tampering by bad actors evading digital defenses.
Insiders often play a pivotal role in physical data breaches—using access cards and knowledge of internal environments to bypass physical barriers and steal Drives containing financial data fetched $250,000+ on dark web marketplaces encouraging theft.
How you can prevent physical access breaches:
- Enforce multifactor authentication for entry into sensitive areas
- Continuously record and audit CCTV camera feeds
- Secure equipment like servers to permanent physical structures
- Deploy interior motion sensors that trigger authorized alerts
Physical barriers paired with modern surveillance and anchorings make sensitive hard drives, motherboards and device components less prone to insider threats.
14. DNS Tunneling
DNS tunneling embeds hidden communication channels within standard DNS traffic to bypass firewalls for data exfiltration. Though complex to execute, DNS lookups used internally enable covert malware or spyware signaling.
Early 2023 warnings highlight increased DNS tunneling allowing Iranian hackers to breach global aerospace and tech firms by quietly bypassing security layers and policies.
How you can prevent DNS tunneling:
- Scrutinize internal DNS queries for odd record usage
- Disable unnecessary resource record types
- Monitor resolver logs via central SIEM access
- Detect domains not resolving to a valid IP
By understanding legitimate DNS requirements, upholding strict configurations, and getting suspicious when things don‘t add up—infrastructure defenders shine light on sneaky DNS data smuggling.
15. Watering Hole Attacks
Watering hole attacks compromise popular websites commonly accessed by targets to stealthily infect visitors with malware and breach secure corporate networks.
Watering hole schemes delivered network access to elite security firm FireEye and global consulting giant Deloitte in recent years—infiltrating enterprises via employees browsing trusted but unknowingly trojaned sites.
How you can prevent watering hole attacks:
- Harden outward-facing web application configurations
- Continuously monitor production websites for malicious code
- Route web traffic through secure proxy gateways
- Segment network zones to limit lateral movement
While preventing initial endpoint infections proves difficult—contained compartments and scrutiny of inbound content quarantines successful watering hole attacks.
Hackers continue to evolve attacks faster than organizations evolve defenses…but by getting back to security basics, we wield proven techniques for fighting cybercrime on the front foot.
- Update Everything: Continuous patching closes overlooked vulnerabilities emerging across devices, apps and services
- Train Humans: Well-informed staff able to identify social engineering and suspicious anomalies remains our first line of defense
- Follow Frameworks: Comprehensive benchmarks like CIS Controls bridge security gaps we often overlook
Combined with tailoring the other preventative controls detailed for your unique risk profile and resources—delivering security in layers turns the tables to protect infrastructure and data against prevalent threats.
No silver bullet solution exists in the world of cybersecurity. But by proactively developing fundamental habits around software security hygiene, user education and adherence to standardized controls—organizations equip themselves to better prevent, detect and respond to the attacks of today (and tomorrow).
