Comptia A+ 1102 Flashcards
What component storage prevents static electricity from discharging?
Antistatic Bags
An administrator is backup chaining a database with the type of backup that utilizes a moderate time and storage requirement. What type of backup is this?
Full with differential
An attacker can access a computer by executing a lunchtime attack. Which of the following principles were NOT followed that led to this attack?
Log off when not using the computer.
A user is about to join a Zoom call and plugs in USB-C headphones with a built-in microphone to the computer’s USB 3 port. A message appears that there are “not enough USB controller resources.” Evaluate the situation and select the best fix for the problem.
Connect the headphones to a USB 2 port.
The IT Department has learned that a new employee starts on Monday and will need a computer just before the weekend. There is a used PC in the storeroom. A “ no operating system found “ message appears when the computer is rebooted after a technician installs Windows 10 on the computer with the hard drive partition style set to support Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). Determine which of the following scenarios would generate that message.
Damaged hard drive
A company is using a credit card transaction that guarantees both customer’s card data and the company’s system are safe against fraudulent purchases and identity theft. What is this?
PCI DSS
A helpdesk manager assesses older Windows 7 computers their company owns and tries to determine available upgrade paths. Which of the following can NOT be upgraded?
Windows 7 home to Windows 10 enterprise
What type of malware attack designates the victim’s computer to mine digital currency?
Cryptominer
After starting the computer and signing in, a user notices the desktop takes a long time to load. Evaluate the following Windows operating system problems to determine the one that best diagnoses what could be causing the slowness.
Corrupted user profile
A pet store owner receives an email from their bank with a special financing offer. The owner clicks on the attachment, but it does not open. Later that day, when the owner returns to their computer, it is running very slowly and will not connect to the internet. By the time the IT consultant arrives, the computer has locked up. Which of the following is the best action for the IT consultant given the existing conditions?
Run an antivirus scan
While researching and writing a paper on their home computer, a student notices an alert in the notification area that Windows Defender has expired and needs to be updated. The student is annoyed by the interruption but clicks on the alert and follows the update instructions. Later, the student told their parents that Defender expired, and they installed the update. The student’s parents are panic-stricken. Determine the best reason for the parents’ reaction from the information provided.
A malicious browser push notification tricked the student into downloading malware.
A lawyer opens an email attachment that appears to be a court summons, but it is malware. The law firm’s IT consultant quarantines the lawyer’s system and then disables System Restore. Which of the following should IT disable?
File history
A teenager hears from friends about a legitimate website to download games to their Samsung Galaxy phone that is not in the Google Play store. The teenager goes to the site and downloads some games. What best describes the teenager’s behavior?
APK Sideloading
A client administrator for a video game development company wants to upgrade machines to support five primary partitions. The developers work with a lot of large files and might even need partitions larger than 2 TB. Which of the following should the administrator use?
GPT
A security analyst notices an unauthorized disclosure of customers’ data at the company. What type of data is breached?
PII
An administrator assists the human resources department in testing access to their new cloud-based training site. Unfortunately, the site cannot be accessed due to the organizational security policy. Which of the following should the administrator use to assist them?
certmgr.msc
A curious IT administrator notices issues with certain applications invoking the kernel. Which operating system would allow the administrator to change the underlying operating system?
Android
A server administrator locks down security on their golden client image but is concerned about potentially breaking things in the environment. They decided to set up a test image for test users in various departments before full implementation. What should the administrator use to make individual configuration changes to the image?
regedit.exe
A server administrator migrates their environment from physical servers to a virtualized environment. The administrator wants to install new virtual machine operating systems. What is the best approach to use regarding deploying virtualized OSs?
ISO’s
A digital forensics expert investigates a laptop that was not completely powered down. They are looking for a hibernation file on the local hard drive. Which power mode would perform this?
Hibernate
A user downloaded a script, but the file was in a text file format. The user needs to change the extension to a PowerShell script to run it, but they do not see the extension. Where can the user configure this setting?
File explorer view tab
A client administrator sets up a new system for GUID partition table (GPT) partitioning. What dependency will the administrator need to set?
UEFI
An administrator for Apple endpoints has heard about roaming profiles on Windows where users can sync certain settings from different devices. Which of the following offers a similar functionality?
iCloud Keychain
A security engineer runs a long tail analysis to determine the frequency of services and processes communicating to the internet. After baselining a large amount of normal traffic such as updates, they encounter a suspicious communication frequency every five minutes from a particular box. They have done a thorough job investigating running processes, memory analysis, and file integrity checks but find nothing. What else could the engineer check for persistence mechanisms that could send the communications?
taskschd.msc
What can use a trusted platform module chip in the computer to tie the use of a fixed disk to a particular motherboard?
Bitlocker
An administrator wants to listen to music through headphones to help with productivity during work. However, the administrator is having issues connecting the headphones via Bluetooth. Where should they go first to look?
Devices
A spouse plans a surprise birthday party for their significant other. The spouse wants to turn off activity history on their browser to make sure their significant other does not find out the surprise. Where can the spouse do this?
Privacy
An administrator uses a method that assigns permissions and rights to a collection of user accounts. What is this called?
Security Group
A technician creates full backups by having the chain start with an initial full backup as normal and afterward makes a series of incremental backups. Which of the following backups is this?
Synthetic
A technician is implementing a Linux shell script that each statement comprising the actions that the script will perform is then typically added on separate lines. Which of the following is this?
.sh
A systems administrator wants to create a scheduled task throughout the environment, which does a basic health check at night when users are not working. Which command should the administrator use in their scheduled task?
chkdsk
A technician is using a tool with a secure erase function that performs a zero-filling on HDDs and marks all blocks as empty on SSDs. The SSD firmware’s automatic garbage collectors then perform the actual erase of each block over time. What is this tool?
Low-level formatting
A technician configures a method to run some server application from a network and make it accessible to the internet. What is this method?
Port forwarding
An IT manager is in charge of client machine administration. The manager wants to test various boot settings before applying them to the environment. Which tool can the manager use to accomplish this best?
msconfig.exe
An employee uses an option to ask for help from a technician with an invitation file protected by a passcode. What is this option?
MSRA
A technician uses a method where each server is configured with a public/private encryption key pair and identified by a host key fingerprint. What is this method?
SSH
A user implements a method that requires a one-time code within a given time frame to get access to their email account. What is this method?
Soft token
A threat actor uses a technique that instills statements through an unfiltered user response. What is this technique?
SQL injection
A researcher calls the help desk complaining of slow computer performance. When the technician arrives and probes for clues, the researcher explains that they frequently run multiple programs simultaneously and have a significant number of browser tabs open to aid with their research. Which of the following solutions should speed up the computer’s performance?
Add RAM
Which of the following malware tries to extort money from the victim?
Spyware
Many mobile apps collect location data. Rogue apps could use location data for criminal purposes, such as burglary. However, many legitimate apps also track a mobile user’s location. Why would a legitimate shopping app have an interest in a user’s location?
Targeted Advertising
An IT specialist removes malware from a computer system and then re-enables System Restore. Then a new restore point is created, all security-critical services and settings are validated, and the DNS configuration is verified. However, when the specialist runs a final antivirus scan, it detects malware. Considering all the steps taken, which would explain why there was still malware on the system?
C&C network connection was detected.
A user wants to share their printer with other teams, but not all teams use the same operating system. What can the user do to configure functionality with the other teams?
Additional drivers
A user calls the help desk complaining that Windows freezes to a blue screen every time it tries to boot. When the technician arrives, they boot the computer in Safe Mode. After evaluating this situation, what is the BEST reason the technician wants to enter Safe Mode to begin troubleshooting?
Safe Mode loads only the minimum amount of drivers and services to start the system.
A manager for a large corporation is in charge of client machines and is currently undergoing a lifecycle hardware refresh. They want to optimize the machines to be powerful enough to run applications. The manager also wants to be sure that they are not underpowered either. What can the manager use to determine CPU optimization?
Privileged time
A user notices that their device has a leaking component and needs to take careful measures to minimize any risk and discard the approved component at the proper waste facility. Which of the following disposal is this?
Battery
A threat actor poses as a hiring manager for a company and asks a user for their personal credentials and to log in to a spoofed website that looks genuine. When the user confirms log-in with the spoofed website, their information is obtained. Which of the following is this attack?
Phishing
A security analyst conducts an incident response investigation against suspected malware on a userbox. The analyst suspects a certain variant of malware known to beacon out to a command and control server. What command will help them investigate this?
netstat
A client administrator for a video game development company wants to upgrade machines to support five primary partitions. The developers work with a lot of large files and might even need partitions larger than 2 TB. Which of the following should the administrator use?
GPT
An administrator uses a method that assigns permissions and rights to a collection of user accounts. What is this called?
Security Group
A spouse plans a surprise birthday party for their significant other. The spouse wants to turn off activity history on their browser to make sure their significant other does not find out the surprise. Where can the spouse do this?
Privacy
What ensures that old data is destroyed by writing to each location on a hard disk drive?
Erasing/wiping
A server administrator receives a report that the company’s external-facing web server is unresponsive. Rebooting the server would take too long, and they are not even completely certain the server would come back up. What utility should the administrator use to restart the website?
services.msc
Users are curious about what is run on startup, so they dig into the startup script. The users find the command “net use M: \sharedrive\data /persistent:yes”. What is the startup script invoking?
Mapped Drive
A digital forensics expert investigates a laptop that was not completely powered down. They are looking for a hibernation file on the local hard drive. Which power mode would perform this?
Hibernate
An administrator automates the creation of folders during a Windows install process. Which command should they use in their script?
md
A user experiences issues searching their local computer for files. What is a common issue that the user should check?
Indexing options
An employee uses an option to ask for help from a technician with an invitation file protected by a passcode. What is this option?
MSRA
A technician is talking to a customer about an issue, but the customer is not sure how to locate the issue on their computer, so the technician has the customer tell them step by step to figure out the issue. What type of technique is this?
Ask an open-ended question
A user receives an unsolicited call from a Microsoft support technician during a normal workday. The technician says the antivirus software on the user’s computer alerted Microsoft of a new malware infection. The technician needs to remote into the user’s computer to fix the problem. What is the technician trying to do?
Circumvent security software.
Two friends want to share photos with each other from their iPhones. The first friend selects their photos and uses AirDrop to share with the second friend. However, the first friend gets a message that there is no one nearby to share with. Why would that message appear?
The second friend has bluetooth disabled.
A company uses a method that restricts its employees from messing with their computer settings. What is this method called?
BIOS
An administrator uses a method that uses simultaneous authentication of equals (SAE) instead of the 4-way handshake. What is this method?
WPA3
A server administrator wants to run the latest technologies. What technology should the administrator start using which will replace the New Technology File System (NTFS)?
ReFS
A user calls the help desk complaining that Windows freezes to a blue screen every time it tries to boot. When the technician arrives, they boot the computer in Safe Mode. After evaluating this situation, what is the BEST reason the technician wants to enter Safe Mode to begin troubleshooting?
Safe Mode loads only the minimum amount of drivers and services to start the system.
Which of the following should generate an alert when the account is disabled or altered?
Change default administrator account
A user receives a Windows dialog box pop-up that states 163 viruses were detected by antivirus software. When the user clicks on the pop-up, it states that to get rid of the viruses the user needs to purchase the software’s full version. What type of antivirus does the user have in this scenario?
Rogue
An administrator uses an access control system to shuttle authentication and authorization traffic between the supplicant and the AAA that encrypts an entire authentication rather than just the password. What is this method?
TACACS+
A security engineer researches how to make backup and antivirus apps available to their iOS mobile devices. Where should the apps be pushed?
Business Manager
A Windows administrator wants to learn how to use Linux by installing the Linux subsystem for Windows. What should their version of Windows have on the New Technology File System (NTFS) to support case-sensitive naming and hard links required by Linux?
POSIX
A video game development company is purchasing upgraded laptops to develop cutting-edge graphics for a new story they have been marketing. They want to be able to integrate persistent system RAM. What type of operating system should they use for support?
Pro for workstations
Before an IT team can submit an application for change, it must include a document that includes an analysis of risks associated with performing the change and risks that might be incurred through not performing the requested change. What type of document is this?
Purpose of the change
A technician configures a method to run some server application from a network and make it accessible to the internet. What is this method?
Port forwarding
A network administrator troubleshoots domain name system (DNS) issues that a particular user is having. Which of the following utilities will help the administrator troubleshoot DNS specifically?
nslookup
Management provides employees with written policies and procedures to help them fulfill their tasks. Which of the following procedures requires employees to enroll and identify themselves using secure credentials
New-user setup checklist
A vulnerability manager is brainstorming different ways to enhance security for their cell phone devices. The company only uses Apple, and so one of the ideas the manager comes up with is to look for anomalistic files that do not belong with Apple for signs of possible malware which did not profile the device and instead just blasted malware out, hoping the operating system would be right. Which of the following would be anomalistic?
.apk
A user wants to share their printer with other teams, but not all teams use the same operating system. What can the user do to configure functionality with the other teams?
Additional drivers
A server administrator receives a report that the company’s external-facing web server is unresponsive. Rebooting the server would take too long, and they are not even completely certain the server would come back up. What utility should the administrator use to restart the website?
services.msc
A marketing professional normally sends large files to other team members. The IT department recommended using a shared drive and assisted them in setting it up. The project was a very high priority, so the professional collaborated with several members but started receiving reports that some users could not access it sometimes and others could. They eventually figured out that only 20 people at a time seemed to be able to access it. What is causing the issue?
The share was created on a Windows desktop
The IT Department has learned that a new employee starts on Monday and will need a computer just before the weekend. There is a used PC in the storeroom. A “ no operating system found “ message appears when the computer is rebooted after a technician installs Windows 10 on the computer with the hard drive partition style set to support Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). Determine which of the following scenarios would generate that message.
Damaged hard drive
An employee enters the web address of their local newspaper to check for news on the company, and a site pops up with many click-bait celebrity stories. The employee re-enters the address assuming a misspelling but returns to the same page. When the help desk technician arrives, which of the following troubleshooting steps would be appropriate?
Check HOSTS files for malicious entries
A software developer is looking at installing a new 64-bit program that will help to streamline coding and optimize workflow. What types of systems can the developer install it on?
64-bit only
A customer has opened a ticket for a problem to be fixed, and when the customer opens the ticket, there will be a record that shows what?
Proper documentation
A server administrator hears weekly about companies breached by malware. What is the most significant impact the server administrator is likely worried about?
Applications
To ensure the authenticity and authorization of a mobile app, a service provider issues a certificate to valid developers. Developers can use this certificate to sign their app, and to establish trust. Which of the following attributes of an app would likely disqualify as trustworthy?
Duplicates the function of core OS apps.
A vulnerability management lead wants to set up the company using a more secure authentication method than a simple password. What hardware aspect should the management lead consider?
Hardware token
An analyst is a method that calculates a product of the likelihood and impact of the potential threat category. What is this method?
Risk levels
Users perform a technique that tends to select C, M, N, O, and S shapes. Which of the following is this?
Pattern
A technician needs this skill to give full attention to the customer, so there is no disagreement or misinterpretation of what was said. What is this skill?
Active Listening
A new employee is going over the site safety handbook about correct ways of carrying objects, so they do not damage the object or get injured. What is this called?
Lifting Techniques
A user is buying software for their PC. Which of the following would the user be purchasing for individual use?
Personal license
What can use a trusted platform module chip in the computer to tie the use of a fixed disk to a particular motherboard?
Bitlocker
A systems administrator for client machines has managed Windows machines for some time. The company is now adding Apple computers. The security team wants to implement an equivalent to Bitlocker. Which of the following should the administrator enable and configure?
Filevault
A user has a Mac computer but likes Windows better for functionality and compatibility purposes. The user wants to sell their computer on an online marketplace and wipe their presence from the computer. Which of the following will help them accomplish this?
Disk Utility
What will block third-party cookies and enable strict tracking protection?
Private browsing mode
A client administrator for a video game development company wants to upgrade machines to support five primary partitions. The developers work with a lot of large files and might even need partitions larger than 2 TB. Which of the following should the administrator use?
GPT
Which of the following backup procedures state that users should have three copies of their data across two media types, with one copy held off-line and off-site?
3-2-1 backup rule
Which of the following contains information about ingredients, health hazards, precautions, and first aid information and what to do if the material is spilled or leaks?
MSDS
A server administrator hears weekly about companies breached by malware. What is the most significant impact the server administrator is likely worried about?
Applications
What type of data breach can be associated with a specific person or use an anonymized or de-identified data set for analysis and research?
Healthcare data
A user is conscientious about security after hearing about breaches in the news. The user wants to see if they are up to date on patches for their Apple computer. Where should the user go to check?
App Store
An IT manager is setting up an image for dispatching airplanes at a major airport. They are trying to lock down the image to run only the dispatch service. One of the layers of security is to block unneeded service ports from communicating, such as email. Where should the manager start?
Windows Firewall
A pet store owner receives an email from their bank with a special financing offer. The owner clicks on the attachment, but it does not open. Later that day, when the owner returns to their computer, it is running very slowly and will not connect to the internet. By the time the IT consultant arrives, the computer has locked up. Which of the following is the best action for the IT consultant given the existing conditions?
Run an antivirus scan.
An intern for a Windows server team is watching a server administrator verify the authenticity and integrity of an installer. Where did the administrator most likely get it from?
Internet download
What technique is used on hard drives that reset them to factory condition and the hard drives only contain the information necessary to interact with a file system?
Low-level formatting
A security analyst notices a critical incident that has a widespread effect on customers that can eventually involve a potential data breach. The analyst creates a ticket with the vendor and sets the importance in order to trigger a faster response time. What describes what attribute of the ticket the analyst set?
Security levels
A technician detected and reported an incident, resulting in the appropriate unit being notified and tasked with acting as first responders, taking charge of the situation, and formulating the appropriate response. What is this unit called?
CSIRT
A helpdesk professional assists a user with issues booting up their Mac computer. The user reports that there is no drive to boot from. Where will the computer boot from?
Web
What uses a 4-way handshake to allow a station to associate with an access point, authenticate its credential, and exchange a key to use for data encryption?
WPA2
What ensures that old data is destroyed by writing to each location on a hard disk drive?
Erasing/wiping
An attacker uses a technique against a wireless network that allows them to flood access points with too many packets. What is this called?
DoS
After starting the computer and signing in, a user notices the desktop takes a long time to load. Evaluate the following Windows operating system problems to determine the one that best diagnoses what could be causing the slowness.
Corrupted user profile
A user uses a scripting language based on Microsoft’s Visual Basic programming language. Which of the following extensions is used?
.vbs
Before an IT team can submit an application for change, it must include a document that includes an analysis of risks associated with performing the change and risks that might be incurred through not performing the requested change. What type of document is this?
Purpose of the change
A security administrator for a defense contracting company wants to disable external devices. The administrator pushes out a group policy setting to disable such devices but worries that attackers might elevate privileges and reenable them. What other setting will help the administrator accomplish the objective?
Selective suspend
A user calls the help desk complaining that Windows freezes to a blue screen every time it tries to boot. When the technician arrives, they boot the computer in Safe Mode. After evaluating this situation, what is the BEST reason the technician wants to enter Safe Mode to begin troubleshooting?
Safe Mode loads only the minimum amount of drivers and services to start the system.
A security researcher wants to install an older operating system for research and testing. What is the most common medium that comes with a disk that the researcher should use?
Optical media
What is this called when antivirus software scans a file before allowing or preventing it from opening?
On-access scanning
