Fraud:- Modern fraud attacks concentrate on manipulating some aspects of electronic currency, credit cards, electronic stock certificates, checks, letters of credit, purchase orders, ATMs, etc.
Scams:- Scams come in various forms, some of the most common ones being sale of services, auctions, multi-level marketing schemes, general merchandise and business losing their money. A very common example is the Nigeria scam, where an email from Nigeria (and other African countries) entices people to deposit money into a bank account with a promise of hefty gains. Whosoever gets caught in this scam loses money heavily.
Destruction:- Some sort of grudge is the motive behind such attacks. For example,unhappy employees attack their own organization, Whereas terrorists ‘strike at much bigger levels. For example, in the year 2000, there was an attack against popular Internet sites such as yahoo, CNN, eBay, Buy.com, Amazon.com, and e-Trade where authorized users of these sites failed to log in or access these sites.
Identity theft:- This is best understood with a quote from Bruce Schneier: Why steal from someone when you can just become that person? In other words, an attacker does not steal anything from a legitimate user-he/she becomes that legitimate user‘: For example, it is much easier to get the password of someone else’s bank account, or to actually be able to get a credit card on someone else’s name. then that privilege can be misused until it gets detected.
Intellectual property theft:- Intellectual property theft ranges from stealing companies’ trade secrets, databases, digital music and videos, electronic documents and books,software, and so on.
Brand theft:- It is quite easy to set up fake Web sites that look like real Web sites, How would a common user known if he/she is visiting the HDFC Bank site or an attacker’s site? Innocent users end up providing their secrets and personal details on these fake sites to the attackers. The attackers use these details to then access the real site, causing and identity theft.
