The vast majority of security breaches do not occur due to poor cybersecurity infrastructure, an oversight on the part of your administrators, or even a brute-force attack from cybercriminals. On the contrary, the majority of breaches are due to human errors, with your employees accidentally compromising their accounts.
When a hacker gains access to an employee’s computer through malware, they can launch a client-side attack. In typical cybersecurity events, an external party attempts to break through your internal defenses. In a client-side attack, the hacker is already inside your system, opening up your business to a range of new threats.
In this article, we’ll explore what client-side attacks are, document the common types of attacks, and document how your business can keep itself safe.
Understanding Client-Side Attacks
A client-side attack is any cybersecurity threat that comes from the user’s perspective. If an employee navigates to a phishing website using their work computer and gives away your company’s valuable data, this has occurred from the client’s side. Equally, if an employee were to download malware onto their device, hackers could then launch a client-side attack by using their computer.
Part of what makes client-side attacks so dangerous is that anything the user has access to, the hacker also now has access to. In your organization, you’ll hopefully already have permission systems set up to limit potential employee access. These systems ensure that certain employees can only see documents that relate directly to their job and anything they need to complete their tasks.
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However, even with these systems in place, disasters can still occur. For example, if a high-ranking executive downloads malware to their computer, then the team of hackers can access the vast majority of your internal documents, giving them the power to create significant issues for your business.
When even one single data breach can cost upwards of $9.48 million for a company, taking risks when it comes to cybersecurity should not be an option. This figure is also rising year-on-year, making this an even more pressing concern for businesses to address in their organizations.
A successful client-side attack can give a hacker complete access to all of your company, customer, and private financial data. Anything that your company stores, they can exfiltrate and sell for money. Securing your business against the most common types of client-side attacks should be a priority.
Common Types of Client-Side Attacks
Client-side attacks often begin with a user navigating to a website that has harmful code hidden on it. Security Magazine states that out of the top 1,000 websites by number of users, as many as 99% use JavaScript integrations, which hackers have been known to use in these client-side attacks.
With the extreme proliferation of client-side attacks, businesses should understand what they look like. If possible, running cybersecurity seminars and classes that help employees better understand potential threats will help reduce the likelihood of a successful attack on your business.
Here are some of the most important client-side attack formats to be aware of:
- Browser Interception: Browser interception client-side attacks are where hackers create websites that include hidden web-server session management control features. When an employee navigates to one of these websites, this feature can collect information on the device and hijack the session. Using this control, hackers can then download malware or navigate to spoofed sites to infect a computer and gain control.
- XSS (Cross-site Scripting): XSS attacks are one of the most common types of client-side attacks. These occur when a hacker injects malicious client-side script directly into a web page. The attacker can execute this malicious code on the client’s server-side device, compromising the end user as soon as they load the page.
- Website Falsification: Spoofed websites, often filled with malicious content, are another common type of client-side attack. Whenever a user navigates to one of these pages, the content injection will make it look like a legitimate site. This could mean that an employee enters their account details on the fake site or downloads malware from it without knowing. Website falsification can use both of the above techniques but also stands alone as its own form of client-side attack.
Client-side attacks are often so effective because the end user may not even realize they are in the midst of a security event. Especially with the wide availability of web scraping tools and AI, hackers can now create highly convincing websites filled with any number of client-side attacks waiting to happen.
Luckily, alongside the progression of cyber threats, cybersecurity companies have also developed, improved, and iterated on their defense solutions to help keep businesses as secure as possible.
Protecting Against Client-Side Attacks
Creating a comprehensive and effective security posture must go beyond only creating a strong external perimeter. By focusing on the potential for client-side attacks, your business can increase its ability to protect against common cybersecurity threats.
Over recent years, cybersecurity solutions have hit the market that offer a high degree of protection against client-side attacks. By partnering with a solution that takes a holistic approach to cybersecurity, your business can stay one step ahead of potential threat vectors.
While preventing every single type of breach is impossible, constantly improving, refining, and expanding upon your cybersecurity architecture will make your business as safe as possible from rising cyber threats.
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