It's a sad fact that the internet is a hostile place and as a web hosting provider our clients are constanty under attack.
A Brute force attack is when someone attempts to gain access to a resource which is protected by a username and password. These types of attacks use automated systems to keep trying common variations of usernames and password in an attempt to guess the correct combination. Our system detects these types of attacks within 60 seconds and blocks the attack from accessing our network further.
Brute force attacks are targeted at FTP servers, Email accounts and web sites administration areas. As an example, we see around 100 attacks each day targeting Wordpress admin sites. Wordpress has become a favourite target for hackers because it is so widely used and in some cases dormant sites are left vulnerable to attacks because of out-of-date software.
More Info.
Very similar to a DOS attack a DDOS attack will attack a specific service in an attempt to stop genuine traffic getting through. Where a DOS attack originates from a single IP address a DDOS attack will come from hundreds or even thousands of IP addresses which make it practically impossible to filter these requests without sophisticated software and hardware in place. In addition to the large number of IP addresses attacking they usually consume all available bandwidth and therefore impact other clients on the same network. Without DDOS protection a host would "black hole or null route" the traffic meaning other clients won't be impacted but the target site remains offline.
More Info.
A denial of service attack is when an attacker tries to stop a service from receiving genuine traffic by flooding it with invalid requests. DOS attacks are normally targeted at websites as a relatively small number of requests can quickly consume all available connections and prevent genuine users from accessing the site. DOS attacks are fairly easy to block as the source IP address can be blocked preventing any further traffic from getting through.
More Info.
Like the brute force attacks an SQL injection attack will use a brute force method to try to gain access to a database by looking for vulnerable code that allows the hacker to inject special commands which are executed by the database server. These types of injections can lead to usernames and passwords being obtained or whole databases being downloaded.
More Info.
A website virus is very different to a virus targeted at a PC. Because a website is always connected to the internet the virus in some cases becomes part of a distributed army of bots. These bots can then be utilised to attack other websites. A virus can get into your website if the software running on your site has a vulnerability or has been badly written. Once in, a hacker will upload so called "back doors" on to your site to ensure they can get back in even afer you have removed any infected scripts from your site.
More Info.