Cyber Security for Beginners: Types of Cyber Attacks

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence. The animated visuals and voice narration are AI-generated; every lesson is scripted, fact-checked and quality-reviewed by the instructor.

Cyber attacks are no longer just an IT problem — they arrive in your inbox, your text messages, and your phone calls. This course gives you a complete, beginner-friendly map of 20 major types of cyber attack, and the practical habits that stop them.

Every lesson is a short (2–7 minute) animated explainer in plain language. Each attack is taught the way a good teacher would explain it: an everyday analogy first — phishing opens with a fisherman hiding a hook inside bait — then what the attack is, how it actually works, and exactly how to protect yourself. The biggest threats (phishing, ransomware, password attacks and DDoS) each include a real-world case study: the forged-invoice con that tricked Google and Facebook out of more than $100 million, WannaCry's global outbreak, the 23andMe credential-stuffing breach, and the Mirai botnet that knocked Twitter, Netflix and Reddit offline for a morning.

What you'll cover:

• Social engineering — phishing, smishing & vishing, spear phishing, and whaling (including deepfake CEO fraud)

• Malware — viruses and worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, drive-by downloads, spyware & keyloggers

• Password & access attacks — password attacks, brute force, session hijacking

• Network attacks — DoS/DDoS, man-in-the-middle, eavesdropping, DNS spoofing

• Web-app attacks (SQL injection, XSS, CSRF), insider threats, birthday attacks and zero-day exploits

• A final Defense Playbook — defense in depth, the five habits that stop most attacks, and a printable cyber-hygiene checklist

No technical background is required, and captions are provided for every lecture.

By the end, you won't just know the names of these attacks — you'll recognize them when they knock, and you'll know exactly what to do.

— Vinay Vernekar, CodeSierra Tech