Need to respond to two student discussions with at least 150 words minimum for each response. Below in the bold are the questions the students are responding to.
For this assignment, create a new message and address the following items in your response.
Describe how a phishing attack works. Explain the role of the spam email, domain name, and website in the phishing attack
Identify and describe the four basic techniques for arranging an enterprise’s Internet point of presence.
Explain how the Web browser authenticates a server that uses SSL. What is the impact on business and our social lives?
Explain the operation of server-side scripts and client-side scripts. How are they the same? How are they different?
Student one:
Good day Professor and fellow Classmates:
Describe how a phishing attack works. Explain the role of the spam email, domain name, and website in the phishing attack.
Simply put a phishing attack attempts are basically a method to trick the end user into submitting their personal details and/or confidential data. The most common way to obtain this information is through email correspondences. Just that method alone is used almost every single day which indicates it is the most effective way for cyber criminals to exploit (Palmer, 2019).1
One of the phishing types known is a social engineering attack. This type of attack aside from user data, it steals login credentials, and credit numbers. This happens when the attacker masquerades as a trusted source which manipulates its victims into opening the message via email, instant messaging, or by SMS texting (Imperva, 2019).2
Spam emails are a type of moneymaking advertising technique that this a very low and cost effective for the attacker to use. Users receiving these types of messages will fall for and buy the advertised product, hence which emails the sender to make money and perpetuating a new phenomenon of problems for users (Runbox, 2019).3
Domain names are simple to recall because it uses simple words that can be remembered easily. They are used to communicate with the DNS server of the website it needs to visit. The Domain Name System (DNS) is what translates the friendly name to an IP address (Lifewire, 2019).
Instant messaging, sometimes referred as either IM or IM’ing. It is the exchange of real time messages either by a stand-alone or software application. Different from chat rooms, users engage in conversation sessions that is based between two users in private with a back-and-forth style of communicating with each other (WhatIs.com, 2019).5
Identify and describe for the four basic techniques for arranging an enterprise’s Internet point of presence.
Well to distinguish the four basic techniques to arrange an enterprise’s internet point of presence (POP) it important to note they are single firewalls, bastion, bastion hosts, three-legged firewalls, and followed by dual firewalls (Smith, 2019). Firstly, the single firewall does not utilize a DMZ, because like with servers it resides inside a firewall. Of those four, it appears that the oldest and the least common method of choice is the bastion host. Further, it is because it requires a more detail set up which then relies on patching and updates in order to be secured from attacks. It can allow internet services to run while acting as the firewall. Nonetheless, with today enterprises utilizes and separates firewalls instead. Next, is the three-legged firewall which is being used to connect to an internet service provider, to include the intranet, and to a DMZ. The outbound traffics are transmitted via the DMZ allowing it to access the internet but restricts all inbound connections from the internal network. Lastly, dual firewalls routinely utilizes two separate firewalls. The first one protects the system from the internet, and the second protects the internal network activities from the DMZ. This method suits better than say the three legged firewall because it uses multiple layers of protection. However, the way all four firewalls are setup makes it more complicated in creating a defense rule management (Smith, 2019).6
Explain how the Web browser authenticates a server that uses SSL. What is the impact on business and our social lives?
So a web browser that authenticates utilizes SSL a user will experience a message indicating that the site has a trusted certificate which resides within the server and presents it on the browser which contains some ciphering. Then the user will accept by sending a cipher suite to the server and decide which suite is appropriate for both the user and the server, respectively. Once this has been established the server then presents it public key confirming to the user who they say they are. When accepted, the both the server and browser will exchange information of the private key. Then both the public and private key will share encrypted information that only both can decrypt together.
Lastly, the impact of the SSL it has on businesses and social media is at a grand scale. What it does it adds a great deal of security when transmitting sensitive information over the web. Recommendation, you should be conducting any business over the web that contains sensitive information without utilizing an SSL protocol. Otherwise, you risk being attacked (IBM, 2019).7
Explain the operation of server-side scripts and client-side scripts. How are they the same? How are they different?
Server-side scripts are used for consistency in a website’s layout or format and includes the most accurate content on the page (Smith, 2016). Client-side scripts are run by the user’s browser and can be accessed from the website’s pages directly (Smith, 2016).
The operation of a server-side scripts are the dependability of a website’s design that suggests that the website’s content be accurate within the pages. Client-side scripts run via the end user’s browser and it is accessed from within the website’s straightforwardly (Smith, 2019).6
References:
1 Palmer, D. (2019). What is phishing? Everything you need to know to protect yourself from scam emails and more | ZDNet. Retrieved from https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-phishing-how-to-protect-yourself-from-scam-emails-and-more/
2 What is phishing | Attack techniques & scam examples | Imperva. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.imperva.com/learn/application-security/phishing-attack-scam/
3 What is spam, and how to avoid it Runbox. (2019). Retrieved from https://runbox.com/email-school/what-is-spam-and-how-to-avoid-it/
4 What a Domain Name Is and How It Works. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-domain-name-2483189
5 What is instant messaging (IM)? Definition from WhatIs.com. (2019). Retrieved from https://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/definition/instant-messaging
6 Smith, R. E. Elementary Information Security. [VitalSource]. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781284093070/
7 IBM Knowledge Center Error. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSYKE2_7.1.0/com.ibm.java.security.component.71.doc/security-component/jsse2Docs/sslprocess.html
-Allan
Student two:
Phishing attacks are popular social engineering attacks used in the reconnaissance phase of an attack to gather information. Phishing attacks often occur in the form of spam email. An end user is spammed with an email appearing to be legitimate; however, the website is often illegitimate, yet seems like a legitimate website. An example would be clicking on a link that goes to a domain name of amazons.com vice amazon.com. This is a subtle difference of adding an s to the domain name. Once at the website, the attacker may seek to gather login information or even credit cards, completing the phishing attack. This similar attack is successful in replicating work domain names, often tricking employees into reauthenticating and stealing their login information.
Internet points of presence are the single point in which traffic enters and exits an internal network to gain access to the Internet. As noted by Smith (2016) PoPs are often established through a single firewall, bastion host, three-legged firewall, or dual firewalls. Single firewalls provide no DMZ capabilities and serve as filters for internal and external traffic. Bastion hosts can be paired with a single firewall for additional security and serve as a guardian for all traffic. Bastion hosts are usually configured for a sole purpose, such as a proxy or DNS server. Other services are removed to prevent attacks against the services. Several organizations leverage a three-legged firewall, one connected to 3 sources, typically the Internet, DMZ, and internal network. External users can come in through the firewall and utilize services in the DMZ, but not in the internal network unless a trusted IP. Another method of implementing a DMZ is through dual firewalls. In this model, instead of 3 connections on one firewall, external traffic hits the first firewall, enters a DMZ, and then passes an internal firewall for intranet access.
SSL encryption is an end to end encryption method that encrypts layer 4 of a packet, making it impossible to determine the port traffic is actually intended for. Attackers can leverage tunneling and encryption to hide malicious traffic as fake web traffic to gain access through port 80 or 443 and then exploit the system once inside the firewall (Smith, 2016).
Server scripts and client scripts serve similar purposes, to automate basic tasks and ease the experience of users and administrators. Everyday servers and clients use scripts to clean up files, transfer data, and execute tasks. Server scripts are often written in a higher language due to increased processing power. Javascript is a common scripting language built for clients. If a user visits a site and attempts to download a file, the server executes a form of the get command through a script and downloads it to the appropriate location on the client. Servers can also call on client scripts to provide resources and files when necessary for an action, which can result in a security vulnerability if exploited.
-Nick
References
Smith, R. E. (2016). Elementary information security, 2nd Edition. Subury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
