I was requested to perform a proof of concept hack into a large organization a few weeks ago. The aim was to get an interactive session, preferably GUI, on one of the internal machines which was guarded by 2 (External and DMZ) firewalls, and an Intrusion detection system. I was allowed to use any means necessary to achieve this goal. This is extremely unusual for a penetrations test, where the rules, guidelines and penetration methods are very strict and defined. I was supposed to impersonate a hacker that would stop at nothing to gain interactive access to the internal network.
More often than not, when your machine has been the victim of a cracker's attack, the best solution is to completely reinstall the operating system, being sure to apply all relevant patches to the machine. In other words, go to your software vendor's website and double-check all of the security announcements and patches... you may have been hit by a brand new exploit. I have many times been asked if a complete reinstall is absolutely necessary. The short and simple answer is "yes".
These days there are significant increases in network-based attacks and among them is the dreaded Denial-of-Service attack, which can leave your systems either unusable or unreachable. Although these attacks don't make the news as often as they did when Yahoo.com was taken down by a massive Distributed Denial of Service attack, they are still prevalent.
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