The motivations behind cyberattacks can vary, but there are three main categories: criminal, political, and personal.

Criminally motivated attackers seek financial gain through monetary theft, data theft, or business disruption. Cybercriminals may hack into a bank account to steal money directly or use social engineering scams to trick people into sending money to them. Hackers may steal data and use it to commit identity theft or sell it on the dark web or hold it for ransom.

Extortion is another popular tactic. Hackers may use ransomware, DDoS attacks, or other tactics to hold data or devices hostage until a company pays. According to the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, 27 percent of cyberattacks aim to extort their victims.

Personally motivated attackers, such as disgruntled current or former employees, primarily seek retribution for some perceived slight. They may take money, steal sensitive data, or disrupt a company's systems.

Politically motivated attackers are often associated with cyberwarfare, cyberterrorism, or "hacktivism." In cyberwarfare, nation-state actors often target their enemies' government agencies or critical infrastructure. For example, since the start of the Russia-Ukraine War, both countries have experienced a rash of cyberattacks against vital institutions (link resides outside ibm.com). Activist hackers, called "hacktivists," may not cause extensive damage to their targets. Instead, they typically seek attention for their causes by making their attacks known to the public.

Less common cyberattack motivations include corporate espionage, in which hackers steal intellectual property to gain an unfair advantage over competitors, and vigilante hackers who exploit a system’s vulnerabilities to warn others about them. Some hackers simply hack for sport, savoring the intellectual challenge.

Criminal organizations, state actors, and private persons can all launch cyberattacks. One way to classify threat actors is by categorizing them as outsider threats or insider threats.

Outsider threats aren’t authorized to use a network or device but break in anyway. External cyberthreat actors include organized criminal groups, professional hackers, state-sponsored actors, amateur hackers, and hacktivists.

Insider threats are users who have authorized and legitimate access to a company’s assets and misuse their privileges deliberately or accidentally. This category includes employees, business partners, clients, contractors, and suppliers with system access.

While negligent users can put their companies at risk, it’s only a cyberattack if the user intentionally uses their privileges to carry out malicious activity. An employee who carelessly stores sensitive information in an unsecured drive isn’t committing a cyberattack — but a disgruntled employee who knowingly makes copies of confidential data for personal gain is. 

Threat actors typically break into computer networks because they’re after something specific. Common targets include:

• Money
• Businesses' financial data
• Client lists
• Customer data, including personally identifiable information (PII) or other sensitive personal data
• Email addresses and login credentials
• Intellectual property, like trade secrets or product designs

In some cases, cyberattackers don’t want to steal anything at all. Rather, they merely wish to disrupt information systems or IT infrastructure to damage a business, government agency, or other target. 

Cybercriminals use many sophisticated tools and techniques to launch cyberattacks against enterprise IT systems, personal computers, and other targets. Some of the most common types of cyberattacks include:

Malware is malicious software that can render infected systems inoperable. Malware can destroy data, steal information, or even wipe files critical to the operating system’s ability to run. Malware comes in many forms, including:

• Trojan horses disguise themselves as useful programs or hide within legitimate software to trick users into installing them. A remote access Trojan (RAT) creates a secret backdoor on the victim’s device, while a dropper Trojan installs additional malware once it has a foothold.
  
  
• Ransomware is sophisticated malware that uses strong encryption to hold data or systems hostage. Cybercriminals then demand payment in exchange for releasing the system and restoring functionality. According to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, ransomware is the second most common type of cyberattack, accounting for 17% of attacks.
  
  
• Scareware uses fake messages to frighten victims into downloading malware or passing sensitive information to a fraudster.
  
  
• Spyware is a type of malware that secretly gathers sensitive information, like usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers. It then sends this information back to the hacker.
  
  
• Rootkits are malware packages that allow hackers to gain administrator-level access to a computer’s operating system or other assets.
  
  
• Worms are self-replicating malicious code that can automatically spread between apps and devices. 

Social engineering attacks manipulate people into doing things they shouldn’t do, like sharing information they shouldn’t share, downloading software they shouldn’t download, or sending money to criminals.

Phishing is one of the most pervasive social engineering attacks. According to the Cost of a Data Breach report, it is the second most common cause of breaches. The most basic phishing scams use fake emails or text messages to steal users’ credentials, exfiltrate sensitive data, or spread malware. Phishing messages are often designed to look as though they’re coming from a legitimate source. They usually direct the victim to click a hyperlink that takes them to a malicious website or open an email attachment that turns out to be malware.

Cybercriminals have also developed more sophisticated methods of phishing. Spear phishing is a highly targeted attack that aims to manipulate a specific individual, often using details from the victim’s public social media profiles to make the ruse more convincing. Whale phishing is a type of spear phishing that specifically targets high-level corporate officers. In a business email compromise (BEC) scam, cybercriminals pose as executives, vendors, or other business associates to trick victims into wiring money or sharing sensitive data. 

Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks flood a system's resources with fraudulent traffic. This traffic overwhelms the system, preventing responses to legitimate requests and reducing the system's ability to perform. A denial-of-service attack may be an end in itself or a setup for another attack.

The difference between DoS attacks and DDoS attacks is simply that DoS attacks use a single source to generate fraudulent traffic, while DDoS attacks use multiple sources. DDoS attacks are often carried out with a botnet, a network of internet-connected, malware-infected devices under a hacker's control. Botnets can include laptops, smartphones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Victims often don't know when a botnet has hijacked their devices.

Account compromise is any attack in which hackers hijack a legitimate user's account for malicious activity. Cybercriminals can break into a user's account in many ways. They can steal credentials through phishing attacks or buy stolen password databases off the dark web. They can use password attack tools like Hashcat and John the Ripper to break password encryptions or stage brute force attacks, in which they run automated scripts or bots to generate and test potential passwords until one works.

In a man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attack, also called an "eavesdropping attack," a hacker secretly intercepts communications between two people or between a user and a server. MitM attacks are commonly carried out via unsecured public wifi networks, where it's relatively easy for threat actors to spy on traffic.

Hackers may read a user's emails or even secretly alter the emails before they reach the recipient. In a session hijacking attack, the hacker interrupts the connection between a user and a server hosting important assets, like a confidential company database. The hacker swaps their IP address with the user's, making the server think they're a legitimate user logged into a legitimate session. This gives the hacker free rein to steal data or otherwise wreak havoc. 

Supply chain attacks are cyberattacks in which hackers breach a company by targeting its software vendors, material suppliers, and other service providers. Because vendors are often connected to their customers' networks in some way, hackers can use the vendor's network as an attack vector to access multiple targets at once.

For example, in 2020, Russian state actors hacked the software vendor SolarWinds and distributed malware to its customers under the guise of a software update (link resides outside ibm.com). The malware allowed Russian spies to access the sensitive data of various US government agencies using SolarWinds' services, including the Treasury, Justice, and State Departments. 

Organizations can reduce cyberattacks by implementing cybersecurity systems and strategies. Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting critical systems and sensitive information from digital attacks using a combination of technology, people, and processes. 

Many organizations implement a threat management strategy to identify and protect their most important assets and resources. Threat management may include policies and security solutions like:

• Identity and access management (IAM) platforms and policies, including least-privilege access, multi-factor authentication, and strong password policies, can help ensure only the right people have access to the right resources. Companies may also require remote employees to use virtual private networks (VPNs) when accessing sensitive resources over unsecured wifi.
   
• A comprehensive data security platform and data loss prevention (DLP) tools can encrypt sensitive data, monitor its access and usage, and raise alerts when suspicious activity is detected. Organizations can also make regular data backups to minimize damage in the event of a breach.
  
  
• Firewalls can help block threat actors from entering the network in the first place. Firewalls can also block malicious traffic flowing out of the network, such as malware attempting to communicate with a command and control server.
   
• Security awareness training can help users identify and avoid some of the most common cyberattack vectors, such as phishing and other social engineering attacks.
  
  
• Vulnerability management policies, including patch management schedules and regular penetration testing, can help catch and close vulnerabilities before hackers can exploit them.
  
  
• Attack surface management (ASM) tools can identify, catalog, and remediate potentially vulnerable assets before cyberattackers find them.
  
  
• Unified endpoint management (UEM) tools can enforce security policies and controls around all endpoints on the corporate network, including laptops, desktops, and mobile devices.

It is impossible to prevent cyberattack attempts entirely, so organizations may also use continuous security monitoring and early detection processes to identify and flag cyberattacks in progress. Examples include:

• Security information and event management (SIEM) systems centralize and track alerts from various internal cybersecurity tools, including intrusion detection systems (IDSs), endpoint detection and response systems (EDRs), and other security solutions.
  
  
• Threat intelligence platforms enrich security alerts to help security teams understand the types of cybersecurity threats they may face.
  
  
• Antivirus software can regularly scan computer systems for malicious programs and automatically eradicate identified malware.
  
  
• Proactive threat hunting processes can track down cyberthreats secretly lurking in the network, such as advanced persistent threats (APTs).

Organizations may also take steps to ensure an appropriate response to ongoing cyberattacks and other cybersecurity events. Examples include:

• Incident response plans can help contain and eradicate various kinds of cyberattacks, restore affected systems, and analyze root causes to prevent future attacks. Incident response plans are shown to reduce the overall costs of cyberattacks. According to the Cost of a Data Breach report, organizations with formal incident response teams and plans have 58% lower breach costs on average.
  
  
• Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solutions can enable security teams to coordinate disparate security tools in semi- or fully automated playbooks for responding to cyberattacks in real-time.
  
  
• Extended detection and response (XDR) solutions integrate security tools and operations across all security layers—users, endpoints, email, applications, networks, cloud workloads, and data. XDRs can help automate complex cyberattack prevention, detection, investigation, and response processes, including proactive threat hunting.