What is a cyber attack? Recent examples show disturbing trends

What is a cyber attack?

Simply put, a cyber attack is an attack launched from one computer or more computers against another computer, multiple computers or networks.

Cyber attacks might be broken down into two broad types: attacks where the goal is to disable the target computer or knock it offline, or attacks where the goal is to get access to the target computer’s data and perhaps gain admin privileges on it. There are a variety of techniques attackers use to achieve those goals, including: