Cisco® Secure Internet Security Solutions

Common Internet Security Threats

Throughout the short history of the Internet, attacks to the public servers of large corporations have been prevalent. These are usually for financial gain to the perpetrator, financial loss to the victim, or sense of personal achievement and increase in status to the perpetrator among the hacking community. These attacks can be categorized based on the type of attack. Most Internet attacks fall into one of these categories. However, just as the Internet evolves, new categories and new attacks evolve all of the time.

These attacks fall into two general categories. They are trying either to gain unauthorized access into the network or to deny service to the network. These two categories can intermingle such that ...