Common Cyber Attacks: Cross-site scripting Attack & Eavesdropping Attack

Ivery Daniels III
2 min readMay 16, 2021

Third-party web tools are used in XSS attacks to execute scripts as in unexpecting web browser and scriptable program. The attacker can inject a payload containing malicious JavaScript further into database of a website. Whenever the user demands a page from both the website, then sends the page to the victim’s browser, which runs the bad script since the attacker’s payload is included in the HTML body.

What is cross-site scripting (XSS) and how to prevent it? | Web Security Academy (portswigger.net)

In instance, it could deliver the unware person’s cookie to such attacker’s server, where the attacker could retrieve and use that to infiltrate the session. Once XSS is used to circumvent additional bugs, the most damaging effects exist. Though XSS can be exploited in languages like VBScript or ActiveX, JavaScript is still the most commonly abused.

This is mainly because JavaScript is endorsed on the site. To prevent XSS attacks, developers should sanitize user-supplied data in an HTTP request until restoring it back. Before returning any response to the server, ensure that it has been checked, indexed, or extracted, namely the values within query parameters while searches. Generate special characters and spaces for a HTML or URL encoded counterparts. Allow users to uninstall client-side scripts.

Eavesdropping attacks are carried out by intercepting network traffic. An intruder may access passwords, financial details, and other personal information that a consumer might be transmitting over network thru eavesdropping. Eavesdropping can be defined into two categories: passive and active. A passive eavesdrop is the process of a hacker detecting information from the client by listening to transmissions of messages within network.

Detection of Eavesdropping Attack Network Projects | Network Simulation Tools

An active eavesdrop requires the hacker to grab information from a disguised unit and sending queries to transmitters (labeled as probing). Ability to detect passive eavesdropping attacks is so much more critical than detecting active ones, because active attacks enable the attacker to first acquire awareness of the supportive units by passive eavesdropping. Data encryption is the most effective anti-eavesdropping measure.

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