Multi-stage attack: concepts, detection and defence

Abstract

In recent years, cyber security has experienced several challenges due to the exponential growth of the internet and the impact of it worldwide. Nowadays, it is nearly impossible to live without being connected, and, even if this has its positive side, there are also many dangers that come along the use of the internet. Day after day we find about new cyber-attacks all around the world, some of these being harder to understand than others, becoming incredibly hard to control or even to prevent them. The following report will focus on one of the toughest types of attacks that exists, the multi-stage attack, which pretends to perpetrate a cyber-attack that affects the target in more than one stage. It will also be discussed the different detection approaches and types that exist, and how helpful these are to identify if the attack is a multi-stage one or not, so this way we can be sure about what we are facing. Finally, different prevention mechanisms will be discussed, and how these are helpful against multi-stage attacks.