Types of Attackers

Movies, caricatures, and websites usually depict computer attackers as secretive, shady, hoody-dressed geniuses sitting in front of a computer and typing or running a significant amount of code (such as the image on slide 14.) This depiction, however, is far from reality since attackers are very diverse in their personality, cognitive ability, socio-economic status, reasons for attacking, attacking resources available to them, and how they unleash their attacks.

Studies about the nature of attackers usually analyze cyber-criminals and convicts (because they are the ones 'at hand'.) Not surprisingly, the characteristics of non-criminal attackers, such as hackers who do it for fun or frustrated individuals who wish to get revenge, may be different from those of criminal attackers.

In general, no single exact profile would capture the traits of a "typical" computer attacker, and the traits of some famous attackers also match many people who are not attackers.

In the next slides, we present a few common categories of attack and their attack motives (= reasons / goals).