CISSP Training Guide

Methods of Attacks

Describe common methods of attack.

The only way to have a good defense is to understand the offense and know how it operates. Access control is no exception. To ensure that you have proper access control and that it is set up correctly, you need to understand how attackers try to break access controls. By understanding how someone is trying to break them, you can build better defenses that either eliminate the threat or make it much harder for the attacker to succeed.

Types of attacks include

• Brute-force

• Denial-of-service

• Spoofing

• Sniffing

Each of these is discussed in the following sections.

Brute-Force

With a brute-force attack, an intruder tries all possible combinations until she guesses the right one. Brute-force attacks ...