However, measures can be taken to reduce the risk of security breaches that can be so devastating to businesses seeking to establish a foothold in the electronic marketplace. Compared with other critical infrastructures, the Internet seems to be a virtual breeding ground for attackers. Attacks enable intruders to gain privileged access to a system so that it effectively belongs to them. With their unauthorized privileges, they can, for example, use the system as a launch platform for attacks on other sites or as one node in an attack using distributed-system intruder tools, which allow intruders to involve a large number of sites simultaneously, focusing all of them to attack one or more victim hosts or networks. Still other attacks are designed to reveal sensitive information, such as passwords or trade secrets.
Internet attacks are easy because Internet users place unwarranted trust in the network.
It is common for sites to be unaware of the amount of trust they actually place in the infrastructure of the Internet and its protocols. Unfortunately, the Internet was originally designed for robustness from attacks or events that were external to the Internet infrastructure - that is, physical attacks against the underlying physical wires and computers that make up the system. The Internet was not designed to withstand internal attacks - attacks by people who are part of the network. And now that the Internet has grown to encompass so many sites, millions of users are effectively inside. Internet attacks are easy in other ways.