A. What is the article all about? Summarize the article in at least seven sentences?
-The title of the article is “Active Attack VS Passive Attack” by Hassan. This article is all about the
risks and threats on the internet, and what type of attacks that the users are exposed to. It also
discussed the different threats that can damage the computer and/or operating system. For
example, some threats may damage and corrupt your operating system and force you to
reinstall it. Another type of threat may steal your credentials and saved passwords. Other
threats may not bring harm to your PC, but they will track your online activities and invade your
privacy. The article strongly discussed that the criminals today are smarter than ever before, and
malicious program are more sophisticated. It is said that modern malware can infect a target PC
and remain undetected for a long time, the advance of computing power makes it possible to
crack difficult passwords in a fraction of seconds and this is terrifying. The article also said that
the motive behind the majority of cyberattacks nowadays in not to bring damage to the
machine, but instead to steal your money, access your private information, or acquire your login
credentials. The article discussed that there are two main categories in cybersecurity risks, and
these are the Passive Attack and the Active Attack.
B. Compare and contrast active and passive attacks.
-The article discussed the two main categories of cybersecurity risks and these are the active
and passive attacks. In Passive attack, the hacker monitors a system and network
communications and scans for open ports and other vulnerability, the intruder in this attack can
quietly collect the users’ information in a couple of ways. The next step is the Active attack, in
this attack, the hacker is using the gathered information during a passive attack to compromise
a user or network. The hackers will try to infiltrate and modify the computer system, this can be
detected due to the hacker’s modification in the users’ computer system but while the user’s
aware, it will be hard to track down the attack and it needs proper monitoring and protection of
human and machine identities. The similarities of these attacks are they are both used to
infiltrate a computer system and used to steal your credentials and information. Their main
difference is that the passive attacks are hard to notice because this attack is used to monitor
the users’ activity and just quietly collect the users’ credentials while active attacks can be
noticeable because the alteration or corruption in the system is being done by the hackers and
it is also hard to track down without knowing the cause or where it starts.
C. What are your recommendation to prevent these attacks.
-Using good network encryption techniques is the safest way to prevent a Passive attack. This
means that the entire message should be well encrypted into an unintelligible language at the
sender's end, and then decoded into an understandable language at the receiver's end. The use
of powerful firewalls along with a strong intrusion prevention system can prevent and protect
you from Active attacks.
