CompTIA Security+ SYO-601 Questions

Question 1

What are the properties of a secure information processing system?

Answer 1

Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (and Non-repudiation).

Question 2

What term is used to describe the property of a secure network where a sender cannot deny having sent a message?

Answer 2

Non-repudiation.

Question 3

A multinational company manages a large amount of valuable intellectual property (IP) data, plus personal data for its customers and account holders. What type of business unit can be used to manage such important and complex security requirements?

Answer 3

A security operations center (SOC).

Question 4

A business is expanding rapidly and the owner is worried about tensions between its established IT and programming divisions. What type of security business unit or function could help to resolve these issues?

Answer 4

Development and operations (DevOps)
Development and operations (DevOps) is a cultural shift within an organization to encourage much more collaboration between developers and system administrators. DevSecOps embeds the security function within these teams as well.

Question 5

You have implemented a secure web gateway that blocks access to a social networking site. How would you categorize this type of security control?

Answer 5

technical
It is a technical type of control (implemented in software) and acts as a preventive measure.

Question 6

A company has installed motion-activated floodlighting on the grounds around its premises. What class and function is this security control?

Answer 6

physical control
It would be classed as a physical control and its function is both detecting and deterring.

Question 7

A firewall appliance intercepts a packet that violates policy. It automatically updates its Access Control List to block all further packets from the source IP. What TWO functions is the security control performing?

Answer 7

Preventive and corrective.

Question 8

If a security control is described as operational and compensating, what can you determine about its nature and function?

Answer 8

That the control is enforced by a a person rather than a technical system, and that the control has been developed to replicate the functionality of a primary control, as required by a security standard.

Question 9

If a company wants to ensure it is following best practice in choosing security controls, what type of resource would provide guidance?

Answer 9

A cybersecurity framework and/or benchmark and secure configuration guides.

Question 10

Which of the following would be assessed by likelihood and impact: vulnerability, threat, or risk?

Answer 10

Risk.
To assess likelihood and impact, you must identify both the vulnerability and the threat posed by a potential exploit.

Question 11

True or false? Nation state actors primarily only pose a risk to other states.

Answer 11

False
nation state actors have targeted commercial interests for theft, espionage, and extortion.

Question 12

You receive an email with a screenshot showing a command prompt at one of your application servers. The email suggests you engage the hacker for a day’s consultancy to patch the vulnerability. How should you categorize this threat?

Answer 12

Grey Hat or Black Hat
This is either gray hat (semi-authorized) hacking or black hat (non-authorized) hacking. If the request for compensation via consultancy is an extortion threat (if refused, the hacker sells the exploit on the dark web), then the motivation is purely financial gain and can be categorized as black hat. If the consultancy is refused and the hacker takes no further action, it can be classed as gray hat.

Question 13

Which type of threat actor is primarily motivated by the desire for social change?

Answer 13

Hacktivist.

Question 14

Which three types of threat actor are most likely to have high levels of funding?

Answer 14

State actors, criminal syndicates, and competitors.

Question 15

You are assisting with writing an attack surface assessment report for a small company. Following the CompTIA syllabus, which two potential attack vectors have been omitted from the following headings in the report? Direct access, Email, Remote and wireless, Web and social media, Cloud.

Answer 15

Removable media and supply chain.

Question 16

You are consulting on threat intelligence solutions for a supplier of electronic voting machines. What type of threat intelligence source would produce the most relevant information at the lowest cost?

Answer 16

Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC)
For critical infrastructure providers, threat data sharing via an Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) is likely to be the best option.

Question 17

Your CEO wants to know if the company’s threat intelligence platform makes effective use of OSINT. What is OSINT?

Answer 17

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is cybersecurity-relevant information harvested from public websites and data records. In terms of threat intelligence specifically, it refers to research and data feeds that are made publicly available.

Question 18

You are assessing whether to join AIS. What is AIS and what protocol should your SIEM support in order to connect to AIS servers?

Answer 18

Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) is a service offered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for participating in threat intelligence sharing.
AIS uses the Trusted Automated eXchange of Indicator Information (TAXII) protocol as a means of transmitting CTI data between servers and clients.

Question 19

You suspect that a rogue host is acting as the default gateway for a subnet in a spoofing attack. What command line tool(s) can you use from a Windows client PC in the same subnet to check the interface properties of the default gateway?

Answer 19

ipconfig, arp, route
Use ipconfig to check the IP addresses of the default gateway and the DHCP server.
Use arp to check the MAC addresses associated with those IP addresses and investigate possible spoofing.
You could also use the route command to verify the properties of the default route.

Question 20

You suspect the rogue host is modifying traffic before forwarding it, with the side effect of increasing network latency. Which tool could you use to measure latency on traffic routed from this subnet?

Answer 20

pathping
From a Windows host, the pathping tool can be used to measure latency along a route.

Question 21

What type of tool could you use to fingerprint the host acting as the default gateway?

Answer 21

Nmap
This requires a tool that performs fingerprinting—service and version detection—by examining responses to network probes and comparing them to known responses from common platforms. Nmap is very widely used for this task, or you could use hping or Netcat.

Question 22

You are investigating a Linux server that is the source of suspicious network traffic. At a terminal on the server, which tool could you use to check which process is using a given TCP port?

Answer 22

netstat
You can use the netstat command to do this.

Question 23

What is a zone transfer and which reconnaissance tools can be used to test whether a server will allow one?

Answer 23

nslookup (Windows)
dig (principally Linux)
dnsenum
A zone transfer is where a domain name server (DNS) allows a client to request all the name records for a domain.
nslookup (Windows) and dig (principally Linux) can be used to test whether this query is allowed.
You could also mention the dnsenum tool, which will check for zone transfers along with other enumeration tests on DNS infrastructure.

Question 24

What type of organizational security assessment is performed using Nessus?

Answer 24

network vulnerability scanner
Nessus is an automated network vulnerability scanner that checks for software vulnerabilities and missing patches.

Question 25

You are developing new detection rules for a network security scanner. Which tool will be of use in testing whether the rules match a malicious traffic sample successfully?

Answer 25

tcpreplay
The tcpreplay tool can be used to stream captured traffic from a file to a monitored network interface.

Question 26

What security posture assessment could a pen tester make using Netcat?

Answer 26

Whether it is possible to open a network connection to a remote host over a given port.

Question 27

You are recommending that a business owner invest in patch management controls for PCs and laptops. What is the main risk from weak patch management procedures on such devices?

Answer 27

Vulnerabilities in the OS and applications software such as web browsers and document readers or in PC and adapter firmware can allow threat actors to run malware and gain a foothold on the network.

Question 28

You are advising a business owner on security for a PC running Windows XP. The PC runs process management software that the owner cannot run on Windows 10. What are the risks arising from this, and how can they be mitigated?

Answer 28

Windows XP is a legacy platform that is no longer receiving security updates. This means that patch management cannot be used to reduce risks from software vulnerabilities. The workstation should be isolated from other systems to reduce the risk of compromise.

Question 29

As a security solutions provider, you are compiling a checklist for your customers to assess potential weak configuration vulnerabilities, based on the CompTIA Security+ syllabus. From the headings you have added so far, which is missing and what vulnerability does it relate to? Default settings, Unsecured root accounts, Open ports and services, Unsecure protocols, Weak encryption, Errors.

Answer 29

Open permissions refers to misconfigured access rights for data folders, network file shares, and cloud storage.

Question 30

You are advising a customer on backup and disaster recovery solutions. The customer is confused between data breaches and data loss and whether the backup solution will protect against both. What explanation can you give?

Answer 30

Backup solutions mitigate risks from data loss, where files or information is deleted, corrupted, or otherwise destroyed. Backup does not mitigate risks from data breach, where confidential or private data is stolen (exfiltrated) and made public or sold for criminal profit. Mitigating risks of data breach requires effective secure processing, authorization, and authentication security controls.

Question 31

A system integrator is offering a turnkey solution for customer contact data storage and engagement analytics using several cloud services. Does this solution present any supply chain risks beyond those of the system integrator’s consulting company?

Answer 31

Yes, the system integrator is proposing the use of multiple vendors (the cloud service providers), with potentially complex issues for collecting, storing, and sharing customer personal data across these vendors. Each company in the supply chain should be assessed for risk and compliance with cybersecurity and privacy standards.

Question 32

You have received an urgent threat advisory and need to configure a network vulnerability scan to check for the presence of a related CVE on your network. What configuration check should you make in the vulnerability scanning software before running the scan?

Answer 32

Verify that the vulnerability feed/plug-in/test has been updated with the specific CVE that you need to test for.

Question 33

You have configured a network vulnerability scanner for an engineering company. When running a scan, multiple sensors within an embedded systems network became unresponsive, causing a production shutdown. What alternative method of vulnerability scanning should be used for the embedded systems network?

Answer 33

A fully non-intrusive solution should be adopted, such as sniffing traffic using a network tap or mirror port. Using the network traffic to detect vulnerabilities rather than actively probing each device will not cause system stability issues (though there is greater risk of false positive and false negative results).

Question 34

A vulnerability scan reports that a CVE associated with CentOS Linux is present on a host, but you have established that the host is not running CentOS. What type of scanning error event is this?

Answer 34

False positive.

Question 35

A small company that you provide security consulting support to has resisted investing in an event management and threat intelligence platform. The CEO has become concerned about an APT risk known to target supply chains within the company’s industry sector and wants you to scan their systems for any sign that they have been targeted already. What are the additional challenges of meeting this request, given the lack of investment?

Answer 35

Collecting network traffic and log data from multiple sources and then analyzing it manually will require many hours of analyst time. The use of threat feeds and intelligence fusion to automate parts of this analysis effort would enable a much swifter response.

Question 36

What term relates to assessment techniques that avoid alerting threat actors?

Answer 36

maneuver.

Question 37

A website owner wants to evaluate whether the site security mitigates risks from criminal syndicates, assuming no risk of insider threat. What type of penetration testing engagement will most closely simulate this adversary capability and resources?

Answer 37

black box (or blind) pen test engagement
A threat actor has no privileged information about the website configuration or security controls. This is simulated in a black box (or blind) pen test engagement.

Question 38

You are agreeing a proposal to run a series of team-based exercises to test security controls under different scenarios. You propose using purple team testing, but the contracting company is only familiar with the concept of red and blue teams. What is the advantage of running a purple team exercise?

Answer 38

In a red versus blue team, there is no contact between the teams, and no opportunity to collaborate on improving security controls. In a purple team exercise, there is regular contact and knowledge sharing between the teams throughout the progression of the exercise.

Question 39

Why should an Internet service provider (ISP) be informed before pen testing on a hosted website takes place?

Answer 39

ISPs monitor their networks for suspicious traffic and may block the test attempts. The pen test may also involve equipment owned and operated by the ISP.

Question 40

What tools are used for OSINT?

Answer 40

Open-source intelligence is a reconnaissance activity to gather information about the target from any public source. The basic tool is web searches/queries plus sites that scan/scrape/monitor vulnerabilities in Internet-facing services and devices. There are also specialist OSINT tools, such as theHarvester, that aggregate data from queries for different resources.

Question 41

In the context of penetration testing, what is persistence?

Answer 41

Persistence refers to the tester’s ability to reconnect to the compromised host and use it as a remote access tool (RAT) or backdoor.

Question 42

The help desk takes a call and the caller states that she cannot connect to the e-commerce website to check her order status. She would also like a user name and password. The user gives a valid customer company name but is not listed as a contact in the customer database. The user does not know the correct company code or customer ID. Is this likely to be a social engineering attempt, or is it a false alarm?

Answer 42

This is likely to be a social engineering attempt. The help desk should not give out any information or add an account without confirming the caller’s identity.

Question 43

A purchasing manager is browsing a list of products on a vendor’s website when a window opens claiming that anti-malware software has detected several thousand files on his computer that are infected with viruses. Instructions in the official-looking window indicate the user should click a link to install software that will remove these infections. What type of social engineering attempt is this, or is it a false alarm?

Answer 43

watering hole attack and/or malvertising
This is a social engineering attempt utilizing a watering hole attack and/or malvertising.

Question 44

Your CEO calls to request market research data immediately be forwarded to her personal email address. You recognize her voice, but a proper request form has not been filled out and use of third-party email is prohibited. She states that normally she would fill out the form and should not be an exception, but she urgently needs the data to prepare for a round table at a conference she is attending. What type of social engineering techniques could this use, or is it a false alarm?

Answer 44

spear phishing
If social engineering, this is spear phishing (the attack uses specific detail) over a voice channel (vishing). It is possible that it uses deep fake technology for voice mimicry. The use of a sophisticated attack for a relatively low-value data asset seems unlikely, however. A fairly safe approach would be to contact the CEO back on a known mobile number.

Question 45

Your company manages marketing data and private information for many high-profile clients. You are hosting an open day for prospective employees. With the possibility of social engineering attacks in mind, what precautions should employees take when the guests are being shown around the office?

Answer 45

Employees should specifically be wary of shoulder surfing attempts to observe passwords and the like.

Question 46

You are troubleshooting a user’s workstation. At the computer, an app window displays on the screen claiming that all of your files are encrypted. The app window demands that you make an anonymous payment if you ever want to recover your data. What type of malware has infected the computer?

Answer 46

ransomware,
This is some type of ransomware, but it will take more investigation whether it is actually crypto-malware or not.

Question 47

You are recommending different antivirus products to the CEO of small travel services firm. The CEO is confused, because they had heard that Trojans represent the biggest threat to computer security these days. What explanation can you give?

Answer 47

While antivirus (A-V) remains a popular marketing description, all current security products worthy of consideration will try to provide protection against a full range of malware and potentially unwanted program (PUP) threats.

Question 48

You are writing a security awareness blog for company CEOs subscribed to your threat platform. Why are backdoors and Trojans different ways of classifying and identifying malware risks?

Answer 48

A Trojan means a malicious program masquerading as something else; a backdoor is a covert means of accessing a host or network. A Trojan need not necessarily operate a backdoor and a backdoor can be established by exploits other than using Trojans. The term remote access trojan (RAT) is used for the specific combination of Trojan and backdoor.

Question 49

You are investigating a business email compromise (BEC) incident. The email account of a developer has been accessed remotely over webmail. Investigating the developer’s workstation finds no indication of a malicious process, but you do locate an unknown USB extension device attached to one of the rear ports. Is this the most likely attack vector, and what type of malware would it implement?

Answer 49

hardware-based keylogger
It is likely that the USB device implements a hardware-based keylogger. This would not necessarily require any malware to be installed or leave any trace in the file system.

Question 50

A user’s computer is performing extremely slowly. Upon investigating, you find that a process named n0tepad.exe is utilizing the CPU at rates of 80-90%. This is accompanied by continual small disk reads and writes to a temporary folder. Should you suspect malware infection and is any particular class of indicated?

Answer 50

Yes, this is malware as the process name is trying to masquerade as a legitimate process. It is not possible to conclusively determine the type without more investigation, but you might initially suspect a crypto-miner/crypto-jacker.

Question 51

Is Cuckoo a type of malware or a security product?

Answer 51

Cuckoo is a security product designed to analyze malware as it runs in an isolated sandbox environment.

Question 52

Which part of a simple cryptographic system must be kept secret—the cipher, the ciphertext, or the key?

Answer 52

Key.
In cryptography, the security of the message is guaranteed by the security of the key. The system does not depend on hiding the algorithm or the message (security by obscurity).

Question 53

Considering that cryptographic hashing is one-way and the digest cannot be reversed, what makes hashing a useful security technique?

Answer 53

Because two parties can hash the same data and compare checksums to see if they match, hashing can be used for data verification in a variety of situations, including password authentication. Hashes of passwords, rather than the password plaintext, can be stored securely or exchanged for authentication. A hash of a file or a hash code in an electronic message can be verified by both parties.

Question 54

Which security property is assured by symmetric encryption?

Answer 54

Confidentiality
symmetric ciphers are generally fast and well suited to bulk encrypting large amounts of data.

Question 55

What are the properties of a public/private key pair?

Answer 55

Each key can reverse the cryptographic operation performed by its pair but cannot reverse an operation performed by itself. The private key must be kept secret by the owner, but the public key is designed to be widely distributed. The private key cannot be determined from the public key, given a sufficient key size.

Question 56

What is the process of digitally signing a message?

Answer 56

A hashing function is used to create a message digest. The digest is then signed using the sender’s private key. The resulting signature can be decrypted by the recipient using the sender’s public key and cannot be modified by any other agency. The recipient can calculate his or her own digest of the message and compare it to the signed hash to validate that the message has not been altered.

Question 57

In a digital envelope, which key encrypts the session key?

Answer 57

The recipient’s public key (typically from the server’s key pair).

Question 58

True or False? Perfect forward secrecy (PFS) ensures that a compromise of a server’s private key will not also put copies of traffic sent to that server in the past at risk of decryption.

Answer 58

True.
PFS ensures that ephemeral keys are used to encrypt each session. These keys are destroyed after use.

Question 59

Why does Diffie-Hellman underpin perfect forward secrecy (PFS)?

Answer 59

Diffie-Hellman allows the sender and recipient to derive the same value (the session key) from some other pre-agreed values. Some of these are exchanged, and some kept private, but there is no way for a snooper to work out the secret just from the publicly exchanged values. This means session keys can be created without relying on the server’s private key, and that it is easy to generate ephemeral keys that are different for each session.

Question 60

What type of bulk encryption cipher mode of operation offers the best security?

Answer 60

Generally, counter modes implementing Authenticated Encryption with Additional Data (AEAD). Specific examples include AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305.

Question 61

True or false? Cryptography is about keeping things secret so they cannot be used as the basis of a non-repudiation system.

Answer 61

False
the usages are not exclusive. There are different types of cryptography and some can be used for non-repudiation. The principle is that if an encryption method (cipher and key) is known only to one person, that person cannot then deny having composed a message. This depends on the algorithm design allowing recipients to decrypt the message but not encrypt it.

Question 62

How can cryptography support high resiliency?

Answer 62

A complex system might have to support many inputs from devices installed to potentially unsecure locations. Such a system is resilient if compromise of a small part of the system is prevented from allowing compromise of the whole system. Cryptography assists this goal by ensuring the authentication and integrity of messages delivered over the control system.

Question 63

For which types of system will a cipher suite that exhibits high latency be problematic?

Answer 63

High latency is not desirable in any system really, but it will affect real-time protocols that exchange voice or video most. In network communications, latency makes the initial protocol handshake longer, meaning delay for users and possible application timeout issues.

Question 64

What is the relevance of entropy to cryptographic functions?

Answer 64

Entropy is a measure of how disordered something is.
A disordered ciphertext is desirable, because remaining features of order from the plaintext make the ciphertext vulnerable to analysis. Identical plaintexts need to be initialized with random or counter values when encrypted by the same key, and the cryptosystem needs a source of randomness to generate strong keys.

Question 65

Your company creates software that requires a database of stored encrypted passwords. What security control could you use to make the password database more resistant to brute force attacks?

Answer 65

PBKDF2
Using a key stretching password storage library, such as PBKDF2, improves resistance to brute-force cracking methods. You might also mention that you could use policies to make users choose longer, non-trivial passwords.

Question 66

Which cryptographic technology is most useful for sharing medical records with an analytics company?

Answer 66

Homomorphic encryption.
Principally used to share privacy-sensitive data sets.
Homomorphic encryption allows calculations to be performed while preserving privacy and confidentiality by keeping the data encrypted.

Question 67

You are assisting a customer with implementing data loss prevention (DLP) software. Of the two products left in consideration, one supports steganalysis of image data, but the other does not. What is the risk of omitting this capability?

Answer 67

Susceptible to the use of command and control or to exfiltrate data covertly.
A threat actor could conceal information within an image file and use that to bypass the DLP system. One thing to note is that attackers could find other ways to implement covertexts (audio or video, for instance) or abuse protocol coding. There are many things that steganalysis needs to be able to scan for! You might also note that steganography is not only a data exfiltration risk. It can also be used to smuggle malicious code into a host system.

Question 68

What is the main weakness of a hierarchical trust model?

Answer 68

The structure depends on the integrity of the root CA.

Question 69

How does a subject go about obtaining a certificate from a CA?

Answer 69

In most cases, the subject generates a key pair then adds the public key along with subject information and certificate type in a certificate signing request (CSR) and submits it to the CA. If the CA accepts the request, it generates a certificate with the appropriate key usage and validity, signs it, and transmits it to the subject.

Question 70

What cryptographic information is stored in a digital certificate?

Answer 70

The subject’s public key and the algorithms used for encryption and hashing. The certificate also stores a digital signature from the issuing CA, establishing the chain of trust.

Question 71

What does it mean if a certificate extension attribute is marked as critical?

Answer 71

That the application processing the certificate must be able to interpret the extension correctly. Otherwise, it should reject the certificate.

Question 72

You are developing a secure web application. What sort of certificate should you request to show that you are the publisher of a program?

Answer 72

A code signing certificate.
Certificates are issued for specific purposes. A certificate issued for one purpose should not be reused for other functions.

Question 73

What extension field is used with a web server certificate to support the identification of the server by multiple specific subdomain labels?

Answer 73

The subject alternative name (SAN) field.
A wildcard certificate will match any subdomain label.

Question 74

What are the potential consequences if a company loses control of a private key?

Answer 74

It puts both data confidentiality and identification and authentication systems at risk. Depending on the key usage, the key may be used to decrypt data with authorization. The key could also be used to impersonate a user or computer account.

Question 75

You are advising a customer about encryption for data backup security and the key escrow services that you offer. How should you explain the risks of key escrow and potential mitigations?

Answer 75

Escrow refers to archiving the key used to encrypt the customer’s backups with your company as a thirdparty.
The risk is that an insider attack from your company may be able to decrypt the data backups. This risk can be mitigated by requiring M-of-N access to the escrow keys, reducing the risk of a rogue administrator.

Question 76

What mechanism informs clients about suspended or revoked keys?

Answer 76

Either a published Certificate Revocation List (CRL) or an Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) responder.

Question 77

What mechanism does HPKP implement?

Answer 77

HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP) ensures that when a client inspects the certificate presented by a server or a code-signed application, it is inspecting the proper certificate by submitting one or more public keys to an HTTP browser via an HTTP header.

Question 78

What type of certificate format can be used if you want to transfer your private key and certificate from one Windows host computer to another?

Answer 78

PKCS #12 / .PFX / .P12.

Question 79

What type of operation is being performed by the following command?
openssl req -nodes -new -newkey rsa:2048 -out my.csr -keyout mykey.pem

Answer 79

This generates a new RSA key pair plus a certificate signing request.
To configure a certificate on a host, create a certificate signing request (CSR) with a new key pair.