What Do Attackers Want?

What an attacker wants varies depending on what motivates the attacker in the first place. In fact, the ways in which an attacker can profit from accessing your network are almost endless. All it takes is a little imagination to figure out possible ways to gain from being on your network. Here are some of the things I’ve personally seen or have heard of attackers doing on a network —

• Just see what they can find
• Play games
• Steal user names and passwords
• Steal personal information
• Steal bank account or credit card information
• Make the network computers part of a botnet to be rented out to others
• Use CPU processing time to mine for digital currency
• Host porn on the infected server
• Send spam
• Use the infected computer to infect other computers
• Use the infected computer in a denial of service attack on another computer
• Steal intellectual property
• Use CPU processing to break cryptographic algorithms
• Use CPU processing to crack passwords
• Use infected computers to damage physical equipment
• Establish a beach head on the network for future use
• Breach a network to ‘send a message’
• Use a compromised website as a platform to promote a cause
• Use a compromised website to infect other visitors
• Host a scam off a compromised website
• Destroy information or intellectual property

I know there are other ways in which an attacker can benefit from compromising your network, but you get the idea – your network is a valuable resource that an attacker wants to own! Give us a call to talk about how we can help protect your network from attackers.