CompTIA Security+ 701 Practice Test 2 Flashcards
Which of the following is a primary goal of the CIA triad?
A. Integrity
B. Non-repudiation
C. Authentication
D. Authorization
Integrity
A component of the CIA triad, which stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.
What is the main purpose of managerial controls?
A. To detect anomalies or intrusions
B. To mandate specific actions or processes
C. To physically secure assets
D. To establish policies and procedures
To establish policies and procedures
Managerial controls establish policies, procedures, and governance.
Which of the following is an example of an operational control?
A. Incident response plan
B. Security policy
C. Access badge
D. Firewall
Incident response plan
An operational control as it involves day-to-day security operations.
Which type of control is primarily focused on discouraging potential attacks?
A. Corrective
B. Deterrent
C. Detective
D. Directive
Deterrent
Deterrent controls focus on discouraging potential attacks.
What type of security control is a biometric authentication system?
A. Physical
B. Managerial
C. Technical
D. Operational
Technical
As it involves hardware or software.
Which of the following is NOT a component of the Zero Trust model?
A. Policy Enforcement Point
B. Policy Engine
C. Policy Administrator
D. Policy Execution Point
Policy Execution Point
Not a component of the Zero Trust model.
What is the primary purpose of key stretching?
A. To revoke digital certificates.
B. To encrypt data for secure transmission.
C. To hide data within other data.
D. To increase the computational effort required to brute force a password.
To increase the computational effort required to brute force a password.
Key stretching is a technique used to make brute force attacks more computationally intensive and time-consuming by repeatedly hashing a password.
What is the primary purpose of a backout plan in the change management process?
A. To schedule a specific time frame for performing maintenance or changes to the IT systems.
B. To keep track of changes made to documents, code, or other collections of information.
C. To identify and analyze the impact of the change on various stakeholders.
D. To define the steps to revert to the original state if the change is unsuccessful.
To define the steps to revert to the original state if the change is unsuccessful.
A backout plan is a plan that defines the steps to revert to the original state if the change is unsuccessful or causes unforeseen problems.
What is the primary purpose of salting in cryptographic solutions?
A. To verify the integrity and authenticity of a digital message or document.
B. To replace sensitive data with non-sensitive placeholders.
C. To add randomness to a password before hashing it.
D. To securely store a copy of cryptographic keys.
To add randomness to a password before hashing it.
Salting is the process of adding random data, called a salt, to a password before hashing it. This ensures that the same password will produce different hash values, making it more resistant to rainbow table attacks.
What is the primary purpose of a certificate revocation list (CRL)?
A. To securely generate, store, and manage cryptographic keys.
B. To issue digital certificates.
C. To list digital certificates that have been revoked by the certificate authority (CA).
D. To encrypt data for secure transmission.
To list digital certificates that have been revoked by the certificate authority.
A certificate revocation list (CRL) is a list of digital certificates that have been revoked by the certificate authority (CA) and are no longer valid.
Which of the following is a form of obfuscation?
A. Data masking
B. Key escrow
C. Key stretching
D. Key exchange
Data masking
A form of obfuscation where sensitive data is replaced with fictitious or non-sensitive data.
Which of the following best describes the motivations of a threat actor involved in data exfiltration?
A. Espionage
B. Service disruption
C. Ethical
D. Philosophical/political beliefs
Espionage
Involves collecting, processing, and analyzing information that is of strategic or tactical value, which includes data exfiltration.
An attacker tricks a user into visiting a malicious website that appears to be identical to a legitimate site. Once on the site, the user unknowingly enters their login credentials, which the attacker captures. This type of attack is known as:
A. Watering hole
B. Typosquatting
C. Pretexting
D. Phishing
Phishing
Involves tricking a target into revealing sensitive information, often by creating fake websites that appear to be legitimate.
Which of the following best describes the attributes of an internal threat actor?
A. Level of sophistication/capability
B. Resources/funding
C. Insider threat
D. Organized crime
Insider threat
This directly refers to an internal threat actor as it’s someone within the organization.
Which of the following motivations is most commonly associated with shadow IT activities?
A. Disruption/chaos
B. Philosophical/political beliefs
C. War
D. Blackmail
Disruption/chaos
Shadow IT involves using unauthorized devices or software within an organization, which can lead to disruption or chaos due to lack of control and potential security risks.
An attacker registers a domain that is a common misspelling of a legitimate domain. The attacker sets up a website on the malicious domain that appears to be identical to the legitimate site to deceive users into entering their login credentials. This type of attack is known as:
A. Phishing
B. Brand impersonation
C. Watering hole
D. Typosquatting
Typosquatting
Specifically involves registering domains that are similar to legitimate ones to deceive users, which matches the scenario described.
Which cryptographic solution ensures data remains unreadable if intercepted during transmission between two parties?
A. Digital signatures
B. Transport/communication encryption
C. Hashing
D. Key stretching
Transport/communication encryption
Ensures data confidentiality during transmission.
Which of the following vulnerabilities is specific to cloud infrastructure?
A. Side loading
B. Time-of-check (TOC)
C. Firmware
D. Cloud-specific
Cloud-specific
Pertains specifically to cloud infrastructures.
An attacker who gains access by leveraging a gap between when a vulnerability is found and when it’s fixed is exploiting:
A. Zero-day
B. End-of-life vulnerability
C. Misconfiguration
D. Legacy vulnerability
Zero-day
A vulnerability that is known but not yet fixed, giving attackers this window to exploit.
Malware designed to spread without user intervention and replicate itself is called:
A. Ransomware
B. Keylogger
C. Trojan
D. Worm
Worm
Designed to spread and replicate without user intervention.
In the context of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), what is the main function of a Certificate Authority (CA)?
A. Issuing and verifying digital certificates
B. Generating a private key for end-users
C. Creating honeypots to trap attackers
D. Obfuscating data for storage
Issuing and verifying digital certificates
Certificate Authorities (CAs) are responsible for issuing digital certificates and validating the entities’ identities.
What is the primary goal of a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack?
A. To guess user passwords
B. To overwhelm resources and disrupt service availability
C. To intercept and modify data in transit
D. To introduce malicious code into a network
To overwhelm resources and disrupt service availability
DDoS attacks flood resources to disrupt services and make them unavailable.
In the context of vulnerabilities, what does “Time-of-use (TOU)” refer to?
A. The time an application is most actively used by employees.
B. The recommended usage time of an application for optimum performance.
C. The moment a resource is accessed in a race condition.
D. The duration a software has been in use in an organization.
The moment a resource is accessed in a race condition.
Time-of-use (TOU) is about accessing the resource, especially when discussing race conditions.
An administrator notices a sudden spike in system resource consumption, especially bandwidth, with no obvious reason. What might this indicate?
A. A scheduled backup process
B. Regular software updates
C. An ongoing Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack
D. An impending hardware failure
An ongoing Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack
Sudden and unexplained spikes in resource consumption, especially bandwidth, may indicate a DDoS attack.
A security consultant recommends restricting software that can run on systems to a known list of accepted programs. This is an example of:
A. Application allow list
B. Patching
C. Configuration enforcement
D. Decommissioning
Application allow list
Specifies approved applications that can run on systems.
Which of the following is NOT a mitigation technique used to secure an enterprise?
A. Least privilege
B. Access control
C. Side loading
D. Hardening techniques
Side loading
Related to mobile devices, not a mitigation technique.
What distinguishes a serverless architecture?
A. Offloading server management tasks to cloud providers and only focusing on application code.
B. Only using physical servers.
C. The complete absence of servers in the infrastructure.
D. The use of virtual machines instead of physical servers.
Offloading server management tasks to cloud providers and only focusing on application code.
Serverless architectures allow developers to focus on code, while the cloud provider manages server provisioning and scaling.
When designing a cloud infrastructure, which of the following best describes “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC)?
A. Applying real-time patches to cloud servers.
B. Utilizing third-party software for infrastructure management.
C. Managing and provisioning computing resources using machine-readable definition files.
D. The use of cloud services for database storage.
Managing and provisioning computing resources using machine-readable definition files.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) allows for automatic setup, modification, and management of infrastructure using code.
A type of malware that holds user data hostage by encrypting it and demanding payment for the decryption key is known as:
A. Worm
B. Logic bomb
C. Spyware
D. Ransomware
Ransomware
Encrypts data and demands payment for decryption.
Which of the following best defines software-defined networking (SDN)?
A. It is a protocol used for web traffic encryption.
B. A networking approach where network control is decoupled from forwarding hardware and is given to a software application.
C. It involves the use of physical switches and routers only.
D. A network solely built for high availability.
A networking approach where network control is decoupled from forwarding hardware and is given to a software application.
SDN allows dynamic, programmatically efficient network configuration.
For an organization that needs to manage its own hardware and have complete control over its data, which architecture is most appropriate?
A. Microservices
B. Serverless
C. Hybrid
D. On-premises
On-premises
Solutions that give organizations complete control over their hardware and data.
A security engineer is trying to ensure a particular service is only active when needed and not continuously running. Which principle is he emphasizing?
A. Responsiveness
B. Cost-effectiveness
C. High availability
D. Scalability
Cost-effectiveness
By ensuring services only run when needed, the engineer can reduce unnecessary costs.
In securing an enterprise infrastructure, why is the concept of “Attack surface” critical?
A. It relates to the physical placement of network devices.
B. It represents all the potential vulnerabilities and entry points an attacker could exploit.
C. It determines the maximum traffic a network can handle.
D. It defines the list of approved devices for a network.
It represents all the potential vulnerabilities and entry points an attacker could exploit.
Minimizing the attack surface helps to reduce the potential risks and vulnerabilities.
Which of the following firewall types focuses specifically on the security of web applications by inspecting HTTP traffic?
A. Layer 4 firewall
B. Next-generation firewall (NGFW)
C. Unified threat management (UTM)
D. Web application firewall (WAF)
Web application firewall (WAF)
Specifically designed to inspect web traffic and protect web applications.