Explanation:
Salami slicing or Salami attack refers to a series of many small actions, often performed by clandestine means, that as an accumulated whole produces a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawful to perform all at once. The term is typically used pejoratively. Although salami slicing is often used to carry out illegal activities, it is only a strategy for gaining an advantage over time by accumulating it in small increments, so it can be used in perfectly legal ways as well.
An example of salami slicing, also known as penny shaving, is the fraudulent practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities, usually by taking advantage of rounding to the nearest cent (or other monetary unit) in financial transactions. It would be done by always rounding down, and putting the fractions of a cent into another account. The idea is to make the change small enough that any single transaction will go undetected.
In information security, a salami attack is a series of minor attacks that together results in a larger attack. Computers are ideally suited to automating this type of attack.
The following answers are incorrect:
Eavesdropping – is the act of secretly listening to the private conversation of others without their consent, as defined by Black’s Law Dictionary. This is commonly thought to be unethical and there is an old adage that “eavesdroppers seldom hear anything good of themselves…eavesdroppers always try to listen to matters that concern them.”
Traffic analysis – is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observed, or even intercepted and stored, the more can be inferred from the traffic. Traffic analysis can be performed in the context of military intelligence, counter-intelligence, or pattern-of-life analysis, and is a concern in computer security.
Masquerading – A masquerade attack is an attack that uses a fake identity, such as a network identity, to gain unauthorized access to personal computer information through legitimate access identification. If an authorization process is not fully protected, it can become extremely vulnerable to a masquerade attack. Masquerade attacks can be perpetrated using stolen passwords and logons, by locating gaps in programs, or by finding a way around the authentication process. The attack can be triggered either by someone within the organization or by an outsider if the organization is connected to a public network. The amount of access masquerade attackers get depends on the level of authorization they’ve managed to attain. As such, masquerade attackers can have a full smorgasbord of cybercrime opportunities if they’ve gained the highest access authority to a business organization. Personal attacks, although less common, can also be harmful.
Reference: http://searchfinancialsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/eavesdropping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eavesdropping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis http://www.techopedia.com/definition/4020/masquerade-attack