-: There are a lot of security threats out there.
They're all out there trying to go and break into
your systems, your computers, and your servers.
We're going to cover four of the main categories right now.
The first is Malware.
Malware is a shorthand term for malicious software.
This can be things like viruses, worms,
Trojan horses, spyware, rootkits, adware,
ransomware, and many other different types.
We're going to spend a lot of time talking about malware.
In fact, we're going to spend the entire portion
of section two covering malware.
And we're going to spend an entire lecture on each one
of these different types that I just listed.
Next, we have Unauthorized Access.
Just like in the last lecture,
when we talked about authorization,
well, if you can break through the authorization,
you can gain unauthorized access.
This occurs when you can get access
to a computer resource or data,
and it occurs without the consent of the owner.
So, if you can sneak by that security guard
and get in past the front door,
that's breaching your physical security,
and that would be a form of unauthorized access.
But, if you're able to guess a user's password
and pretend to be them and log on to their system,
well, that's also considered unauthorized access,
except it's in the logical realm.
The third category is called System Failure.
This occurs when a computer crashes
or an individual application fails.
In the old days, we used to call this
the dreaded blue screen of death, or BSOD.
That's because on Windows XP,
whenever the system would crash,
you would get a bright blue screen
with tiny white text telling you why it crashed.
And on a lot of Windows systems,
this would happen quite frequently.
And so, it became a running joke in the community
called the blue screen of death.
The fourth category of security threats
are Social Engineering.
Social engineering is the act of manipulating
a user into revealing confidential information
or performing other actions that are detrimental
to either the user or their company.
One of the ways this occurs is through phishing.
You might get an email that tells you that you've won money,
or that your PayPal account has been hacked,
or a myriad of other pretext.
In that email, there's also a link,
and if you click that link, it brings you to a login page
that looks just like your bank or PayPal
or whatever they're trying to simulate.
So, you put in your username
and your password and click Login.
But instead of giving that information to your bank,
you just instead gave it to a criminal.
This is a form of social engineering
using technical capacity.
Another example would be if I started going to your office
and I showed up at the front door
with a big brown box in my hands
and I'm wearing a brown shirt, like I'm a delivery man.
You might open the door and let me
past security to go deliver my package.
But, I wasn't really authorized to be there.
In fact, I don't work for the delivery company.
I'm instead just trying to get in your building
and past security so that I can break into your network.
Social engineering is a really fun topic to talk about,
and we're going to spend some time
on this later on in the course.