One of CESG’s roles is to minimise the risk of electronic attack to the Government community. This involves assessing the technical capabilities of an attacker, identifying vulnerabilities associated with technologies utilised within Government systems, and to provide advice and guidance to the community on securing IT systems.

Electronic attack typically involves using computers to gain unauthorised access to data for the express purposes of denying authorised access, corrupting its content, disrupting its use, or for data exfiltration.

Hacking is a term that covers any attempt to gain unauthorised access to a computer system

Malicious Code (or malware) is the name given that covers electronic viruses, worms, and Trojans. These can be spread through a number of methods, including email, compromised web sites, shareware/freeware, and other routes such as promotional material.

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are usually designed and perpetrated to overwhelm network computer systems with a flood of network traffic. This flood of traffic often has the effect of denying access to the computer system for legitimate users. The unwanted traffic is often generated using innocent computer systems known as ‘zombies’, that have previously been infected with malicious code.