Threats, Attacks, and Vulnerabilities

Question 1

What is the difference between intrusive versus non-intrusive vulnerability scans?

Answer 1

Non-intrusive identifies active OSs, applications, and ports by scanning system attributes, which intrusive actually probes devices and examines their responses.

Question 2

Which type of attack involves flooding a recipient e-mail address with identical e-mails?

Answer 2

Spamming attack

Question 3

What type of attack sequentially generates every possible password and checks them all against a password file

Answer 3

Brute force attack

Question 4

Which type of attack allows an attacker to redirect Internet traffic by setting up a fake DNS server to answer client requsts?

Answer 4

DNS spoofing

Question 5

What is spear phishing?

Answer 5

Phishing attempt that appears to come from a trusted person

Question 6

What is a replay attack?

Answer 6

An attack where an intruder records the communication between a user and a server, and plays the recorded information back to impersonate the user

Question 7

What does the acronym XSRF denote>

Answer 7

Cross-Site Request Forgery

Question 8

What category of threat actor is most likely to have high funding and a high level of sophistication?

Answer 8

State actors or APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats)

Question 9

What occurs during grey-box testing?

Answer 9

Security professionals with limited inside knowledge of the network attempted to hack into the network

Question 10

What social engineering principle is being used when limited availability is used as a technique

Answer 10

Scarcity

Question 11

What is bluesnarfing?

Answer 11

The act of gaining unauthorized access to a device (and the network it is connected to) through its Bluetooth connection

Question 12

What is a flaw, loophole, or weakness in the system, software, or hardware?

Answer 12

Vulnerability

Question 13

What viruses are written in a macro language and typically infect operating systems?

Answer 13

Macro viruses

Question 14

What is phishing

Answer 14

When a request for confidential information that appears to originate from a seemingly trusted entity is recieved

Question 15

What self-replicating computer program sends copies of itself to other devices on the network?

Answer 15

Worm

Question 16

What is the most likely cause of a single computer communicating with an unknown IRC server and scanning other systems on the network

Answer 16

The computer is infected with a botnet

Question 17

What is pharming

Answer 17

Traffic redirection to a website that looks identical to the intended website

Question 18

What type of attack embeds an intruder to capture and modify data traffic by rerouting the traffic from a network device to the intruder’s computer

Answer 18

Network address hijacking

Question 19

What category of vulnerability includes injection, cross-site scripting, and cross-site request forgery

Answer 19

Improper input handling

Question 20

What is a trojan horse?

Answer 20

Malware that is disguised as a useful utility, but is embedded with a malicious code to infect computer systems

Question 21

What is Nessus?

Answer 21

Network vulnerability scanner

Question 22

What is an evil twin?

Answer 22

An access point with the same SSID as the legitimate access point

Question 23

What does the acronym XSS denote?

Answer 23

Cross site scripting

Question 24

What is an integer overflow

Answer 24

When an application or OS tries to place into computer memory an integer that is too large for the data type

Question 25

What is a zero-day exploit

Answer 25

An attack that exploits a security vulnerability on the day the vulnerability becomes generally known

Question 26

Which virus creates many variants by modifying its code to decieve antivirus scanners

Answer 26

Polymorphic virus

Question 27

Which malicious software infects a system without relying upon other applications for its executing

Answer 27

Worm

Question 28

What is the term for a potential opening in network security that a hacker can exploit to attack a network

Answer 28

Vulnerability

Question 29

Which type of attack intercepts an established TCP session?

Answer 29

* TCP hijacking | * Session hijacking

Question 30

Which type of attack does Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) protect against?

Answer 30

Replay

Question 31

What is meant by the term data exfiltration

Answer 31

The unauthorized transfer of data from a computer or device

Question 32

Which error condition arises because data is not checked before input to ensure that it has an appropriate length?

Answer 32

Buffer overflow errors

Question 33

Which type of attack runs code within another process's address space by making it a dynamic link library

Answer 33

DLL injection attack

Question 34

Which attack is an extension of the denial-of-service (DoS) attack and uses multiple computers

Answer 34

A distributed denial of service attack (DDoS)

Question 35

Which type of brute-force attack attempts to find any two hashed passwords or messages that have the same value

Answer 35

Birthday attack

Question 36

What type of virus can change its signature to avoid detection

Answer 36

Polymorphic virus

Question 37

What is the difference between credentialed and non credentialed vulnerability scans

Answer 37

* Credentialed vulnerability scans use authentication to simulate an administrator or use on the system * Non credentialed vulnerability scans do not authenticate

Question 38

Which type of attack is characterized by an attacker who takes over the session of an already authenticated user?

Answer 38

Hijacking

Question 39

What does the acronym DDoS denote?

Answer 39

Distributed denial of service

Question 40

Which type of attack is characterized by an attacker who records an encrypted transmission between a client and a server computer so that they can then send it to the server to gain access?

Answer 40

Replay attack

Question 41

Which type of virus attempts to hide from antivirus software and from the operating system by remaining in memeory?

Answer 41

* Fileless virus | * Stealth

Question 42

What is a malicious insider?

Answer 42

An employee who uses his access to the network and facility to obtain confidential information

Question 43

What occurs during white-box testing

Answer 43

A security firm is provided with a production-like test environment, login details, production documentation, and source code

Question 44

What is bluejacking

Answer 44

An attack that sends spam over a bluetooth connection

Question 45

What are the nine categories of threat actors according to the CompTIA Security+ blueprint?

Answer 45

* Script Kiddies * Hacktivist * Criminal syndicates * State actors * Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) * Insiders * Hackers * Shadow IT * Competitors

Question 46

What is the name for a hole in the security of an application deliberately left in place by a designer

Answer 46

Backdoor

Question 47

What is an attempt by someone to get one or more users to believe that a specific computer virus exist

Answer 47

Hoax

Question 48

What is spimming

Answer 48

Spam sent over instant messaging applications

Question 49

What social engineering principle is being used when limited time is used as a technique

Answer 49

Urgency

Question 50

What social engineering principle is being used when an attacker pretends to be a member of law enforcement to obtain information

Answer 50

Authority

Question 51

What social engineering principle is being used when bullying tactics are employed to obtain information

Answer 51

Intimidation

Question 52

What is a smurf attack?

Answer 52

An attack where a ping request is sent to a broadcast network address with the aim to overwhelm the system

Question 53

What social engineering principle is being used when an attacker attempts to build rapport?

Answer 53

Familiarity or liking

Question 54

Which type of attack is characterized by an attacker who situates themselves in such a way that they can intercept all traffic between two hosts?

Answer 54

Man-in-the-middle

Question 55

What type of malware appears to perform a valuable function, but actually performs malicious acts

Answer 55

Trojan

Question 56

Which attack requires that a hacker compromises as many computers as possible to initiate the attack

Answer 56

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack

Question 57

What is click-jacking

Answer 57

Tricking a web user into clicking a spoofed button or graphic in place of the one the user is trying to click

Question 58

What is a race condition?

Answer 58

A flaw that produces an unexpected result when the timing of actions impact other actions

Question 59

What conditions or event does a pointer dereference usually cause

Answer 59

An application crash

Question 60

Which type of code performs malicious acts only when a certain set of conditions occurs?

Answer 60

Logic bomb

Question 61

What are alternate terms for cross-site request forgery (XSRF)?

Answer 61

* Session riding | * One-click attack

Question 62

According to CompTIA's Security+ examination blueprint, what are the seven listed reasons for effectiveness for social engineering attacks

Answer 62

* Authority * Intimidation * Consensus * Scarcity * Urgency * Familiarity * Trust

Question 63

What address is faked with IP spoofing attacks?

Answer 63

The source IP address

Question 64

What is the best protection against cross-site scripting (XSS)?

Answer 64

Disable the running of scripts

Question 65

What is vishing?

Answer 65

Phishing via Voice over IP (VoIP)

Question 66

What is an IV attack?

Answer 66

Cracking the WEP secret key using the initialization vector (IV)

Question 67

What is the purpose of dumpster diving?

Answer 67

To discover confidential information, such as user passwords

Question 68

What is meant by the term end-of-life system

Answer 68

A device, OS, or application that is no longer supported by the vender

Question 69

What is an IP spoofing attack?

Answer 69

An attack in which the source IP address in an IP datagram is modified to imitate the IP address of a packet originating from an authorized source

Question 70

Which error occurs when the length of the input data is more than the length of the processor buffer can handle

Answer 70

Buffer overflow

Question 71

Which attack uses clients, handles, agents, and targets?

Answer 71

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack

Question 72

What does the acronym APT denote?

Answer 72

Advanced Persistent Threat

Question 73

What is XML injection?

Answer 73

When a user enters values in an XML query that takes advantage of security loopholes

Question 74

What is the act of gaining unauthorized access to a facility by using another user's access credentials?

Answer 74

* Tailgating | * Piggybacking

Question 75

Which type of attack searches long lists of words for a particular language to match them to an encrypted password

Answer 75

Dictionary Attack

Question 76

What is a command injection?

Answer 76

When an operating system command is submitted in an HTML string

Question 77

What is the greatest security risk of instant messaging?

Answer 77

Impersonation

Question 78

What category of threat actor is most likely to be trying to make a political statement

Answer 78

Hacktivist

Question 79

What is war driving?

Answer 79

The act of discovering unprotected wireless network by driving around with a laptop

Question 80

What is an injection attack?

Answer 80

When an application is tricked into including unintended commands in the data sent to the interpreter

Question 81

What is war chalking?

Answer 81

Leaving signals about a wireless network on the outside of the building where it is housed

Question 82

What social engineering principle is being used when fake testimonials are used to promote a fake security product?

Answer 82

* Consensus | * Social proof

Question 83

Which type of attack do privacy screens protect against

Answer 83

Shoulder surfing

Question 84

What assessment determines whether network security is properly configured to rebuff hacker attacks?

Answer 84

Penetration test

Question 85

In which type of attack is a user connected to a different web server than the one inteded by the user

Answer 85

Hyperlink spoofing attack

Question 86

What is a memory leak?

Answer 86

The failure of an OS or application to free up dynamically requested memory

Question 87

What is cross-site scripting?

Answer 87

Injection of malicious code into a vulnerable web application or database that will execute scripts in a victim's browser

Question 88

What is whaling?

Answer 88

Phishing that targets a single power user, such as a CEO of a company

Question 89

What is cross-site request forgery (XSRF)?

Answer 89

Unauthorized commands coming from a trusted user to a user or website, usually through social networking

Question 90

What social engineering principle is being used when an attacker builds a long-term relationship?

Answer 90

Trust

Question 91

Which category of threat actor is most likely to be acting out of a grievance against the organization?

Answer 91

Insider

Question 92

What is cross-site request forgery?

Answer 92

Tricking a web browser into executing a malicious action on a trusted site for which the user is currently authenticated

Question 93

What is a phishing attack?

Answer 93

An attack where a user is sent a message that appears to come from a valid entity asking for personally identifiable information (PII)

Question 94

What is an Xmas attack?

Answer 94

An attack that looks for open ports

Question 95

Are instant messages typically encrypted

Answer 95

No