Attack Glossary

Browse 9 attack terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

9 Attack Terms

Brute Force
Brute Force is an attack method that systematically tries every possible combination of a password, encryption key, or other secret value until the correct one...
Clickjacking
An attack where a malicious site loads a target site in a transparent iframe positioned over a decoy UI, tricking users into clicking buttons on the hidden...
Dependency Confusion
A supply chain attack where an attacker publishes a malicious package on a public registry with the same name as a private/internal package. Package managers...
Exploit
Exploit in cybersecurity is a piece of code, software, data sequence, or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability in a computer system, application,...
IDOR
Insecure Direct Object Reference — a vulnerability where an application exposes internal object IDs (user IDs, file names, database keys) in API endpoints...
Padding Oracle Attack
A cryptographic attack that abuses padding error responses to gradually decrypt or forge ciphertext. It shows up in application security, identity,...
Privilege Escalation
The act of exploiting a vulnerability or misconfiguration to gain elevated access rights beyond those originally granted, moving from a limited user to...
Prompt Injection
An attack where malicious instructions are embedded in user input to override an LLM's system prompt or instructions. Direct injection modifies the prompt...
Supply Chain Security
Protecting the integrity of software by securing every component in the supply chain — source code, build systems, dependencies, CI/CD pipelines, and artifact...

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