Penetration Testing For Dummies

Chapter 7

Destroy (Malware)

IN THIS CHAPTER

Stopping destroy attacks with antivirus software

Using Nessus to track down malware in your enterprise

Exploring various types of malware: worms, spyware, Trojan horses, and more

Staying ahead of ransomware

The next series of attacks I cover revolves around the destruction of targets or the destruction of the resources provided by targets. The previous chapters in this part cover attacks that are meant to confuse, obfuscate, distract, overwhelm, or disrupt, and maybe even remain completely undetected. But in this chapter, I cover the types of attacks meant to simply destroy a company’s assets for the purpose of revenge, leverage, gain, or in some cases, for the challenge (or for fun).

Destroy attacks can cost a company a lot of time and money to recover from. You can recover from a destroy attack if you’re running a backup program, but your real loss is time. The time it takes to recover the system, data, or resource can be lengthy. If you’re running a disaster recovery solution, you could try to move your clients over to another working ...