Common Attack Strategies

Some of the common attack methods that Schneier lists include:

• Attacks on cryptographic designs
• Attacks against implementations
• Attacks against passwords
• Attacks against hardware
• Attacks against trust models
• Attacks against users
• Attacks against failure recovery methods
• Attacks against cryptography
• Failures to detect attacks when they occur

People must realize that the adversary never sleeps and is always poised to exploit any vulnerabilities they find or ''think'' they''ve found. As e-commerce proliferates and valuable treasures of is collected in ever-increasing volume, the adversary is that much more motivated to carry out misdeeds.