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Glossary terms from week 3 & wrap-up

Nice job finishing this section!
Let's review what you've learned so far.
We discussed how to secure networks.
We also learned about network intrusion tactics
like malicious packet sniffing and IP spoofing.
Finally, we discussed how
a security analyst can protect against these attacks.
You've learned about DoS and DDoS
attacks like ICMP flooding, SYN attacks,
and the ping of death,
which try to overwhelming a network by
flooding it with unwanted data packets.

Now, just think about everything you
know already about network attacks.
What you've learned in these videos will be
essential in your work as a security analyst.
Coming up, you'll learn
about how security analysts can protect
the network using various security hardening techniques.

Terms and definitions from Course 3, Week 3

Active packet sniffing: A type of attack where data packets are manipulated in transit

Botnet: A collection of computers infected by malware that are under the control of a single threat actor, known as the “bot-herder"

Denial of service (DoS) attack: An attack that targets a network or server and floods it with network traffic

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack: A type of denial or service attack that uses multiple devices or servers located in different locations to flood the target network with unwanted traffic

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP): An internet protocol used by devices to tell each other about data transmission errors across the network

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) flood: A type of DoS attack performed by an attacker repeatedly sending ICMP request packets to a network server

IP spoofing: A network attack performed when an attacker changes the source IP of a data packet to impersonate an authorized system and gain access to a network

Network Interface Card (NIC): Hardware that connects computers to a network

On-path attack: An attack where a malicious actor places themselves in the middle of an authorized connection and intercepts or alters the data in transit

Packet sniffing: The practice of capturing and inspecting data packets across a network 

Passive packet sniffing: A type of attack where a malicious actor connects to a network hub and looks at all traffic on the network

Ping of death: A type of DoS attack caused when a hacker pings a system by sending it an oversized ICMP packet that is bigger than 64KB

Replay attack: A network attack performed when a malicious actor intercepts a data packet in transit and delays it or repeats it at another time

Smurf attack: A network attack performed when an attacker sniffs an authorized user’s IP address and floods it with ICMP packets

Synchronize (SYN) flood attack: A type of DoS attack that simulates a TCP/IP connection and floods a server with SYN packets


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