What is a security attack
The term security attack is commonly used in Information security for all breaches of security whether malicious or accidental. Hence, when you accidentally delete one of your files, we would still call that a security attack on its availability.
It is sometimes useful to divide security attacks in passive attacks and active attacks. An example of a passive attack is shoulder surfing, when someone looks over your shoulder when you type in your password or pincode, thereby breaching its confidentiality. An example of an active attack would be when that same person uses your password to access your computer account.
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