A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets

computer information systems An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

s, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted areas of the system without authorization, potentially with malicious intent. Depending on the context, cyberattacks can be part of

cyber warfare Cyberwarfare is the use of cyber attacks against an enemy state, causing comparable harm to actual warfare and/or disrupting vital computer systems. Some intended outcomes could be espionage, sabotage, propaganda, manipulation or economic war ...

cyberterrorism Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, la ...

. A cyberattack can be employed by

sovereign state A sovereign state or sovereign country, is a polity, political entity represented by one central government that has supreme legitimate authority over territory. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defin ...

s, individuals, groups, societies or organisations and it may originate from an anonymous source. A product that facilitates a cyberattack is sometimes called a

cyber weapon Cyber may refer to: Computing and the Internet * ''Cyber-'', from cybernetics, a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory and purposive systems Crime and security * Cyber crime, crime that involves computers and networks ** Conventi ...

. Cyber attacks have increased with an alarming rate for the last few years A cyberattack may steal, alter, or destroy a specified target by hacking into a susceptible system. Cyberattacks can range from installing

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their privac ...

on a personal computer to attempting to destroy the infrastructure of entire nations. Legal experts are seeking to limit the use of the term to incidents causing physical damage, distinguishing it from the more routine

data breach A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, info ...

es and broader hacking activities. Cyberattacks have become increasingly sophisticated and dangerous.

User behavior analytics User behavior analytics (UBA) is a cybersecurity process regarding the detection of insider threats, targeted attacks, and financial fraud that tracks a system's users. UBA looks at patterns of human behavior, and then analyzes observations to det ...

and

Security Information and Event Management Security information and event management (SIEM) is a field within the field of computer security, where software products and services combine security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM). They provide real-time ana ...

(SIEM) can be used to help prevent these attacks.

Definitions

Since the late 1980s cyberattacks have evolved several times to use innovations in

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

as vectors for committing

cybercrimes A cybercrime is a crime that involves a computer or a computer network.Moore, R. (2005) "Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime," Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing. The computer may have been used in committing the ...

. In recent years, the scale and robustness of cyberattacks have increased rapidly, as observed by the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

in its 2018 report: "Offensive cyber capabilities are developing more rapidly than our ability to deal with hostile incidents".Alt URL
In May 2000, the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

defined attack in RFC 2828 as: :''an

assault An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in crim ...

on system security that derives from an intelligent

threat A threat is a communication of intent to inflict harm or loss on another person. Intimidation is a tactic used between conflicting parties to make the other timid or psychologically insecure for coercion or control. The act of intimidation for co ...

, i.e., an intelligent act that is a deliberate attempt (especially in the sense of a method or technique) to evade security services and violate the

security policy Security policy is a definition of what it means to ''be secure'' for a system, organization or other entity. For an organization, it addresses the constraints on behavior of its members as well as constraints imposed on adversaries by mechanisms ...

of a system.'' CNSS Instruction No. 4009 dated 26 April 2010 by

Committee on National Security Systems The Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS) is a United States intergovernmental organization that sets policy for the security of the US security systems. Charter, mission, and leadership The National Security Telecommunications and Infor ...

of the United States of AmericaCNSS Instruction No. 4009
dated 26 April 2010 defines an attack as: :''Any kind of malicious activity that attempts to collect, disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy information system resources or the information itself.'' The increasing dependency of modern society on information and computer networks (both in private and public sectors, including the military) has led to new terms like cyber attack and

. CNSS Instruction No. 4009 define a cyber attack as: :''An attack, via cyberspace, targets an enterprise’s use of cyberspace for the purpose of disrupting, disabling, destroying, or maliciously controlling a computing environment/infrastructure; or destroying the integrity of the data or stealing controlled information.'' As cars begin to adopt more technology, cyber attacks are becoming a security threat to automobiles.

Prevalence

In the first six months of 2017, two billion data records were stolen or impacted by cyber attacks, and

ransomware Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, ...

payments reached , double that in 2016. In 2020, with the increase of remote work as an effect of the COVID-19 global pandemic, cybersecurity statistics reveal a huge increase in hacked and breached data. The worldwide information security market is forecast to reach $170.4 billion in 2022.

Cyber warfare and cyberterrorism

Cyberwarfare utilizes techniques of defending and attacking information and computer networks that inhabit cyberspace, often through a prolonged

cyber campaign {{Short pages monitor