CSO-002 Flashcards
An analyst is performing penetration testing and vulnerability assessment activities against a new vehicle automation platform.
Which of the following is MOST likely an attack vector that is being utilized as a part of the testing and assessment?
A. FaaS B. RTOS C. SoC D. GPS E. CAN bus
B. RTOS
keyword is vehicle automation platform. So the OS not the car itself
An information security analyst observes anomalous behavior on the SCADA devices in a power plant. This behavior results in the industrial generators overheating and destabilizing the power supply.
Which of the following would BEST identify potential indicators of compromise?
A. Use Burp Suite to capture packets to the SCADA device’s IP.
B. Use tcpdump to capture packets from the SCADA device IP.
C. Use Wireshark to capture packets between SCADA devices and the management system.
D. Use Nmap to capture packets from the management system to the SCADA devices.
C. Use Wireshark to capture packets between SCADA devices and the management system.
Wireshark is the best tool listed for packet capture and analysis
Which of the following would MOST likely be included in the incident response procedure after a security breach of customer PII?
A. Human resources
B. Public relations
C. Marketing
D. Internal network operations center
B. Public relations
An analyst is working with a network engineer to resolve a vulnerability that was found in a piece of legacy hardware, which is critical to the operation of the organization’s production line. The legacy hardware does not have third-party support, and the OEM manufacturer of the controller is no longer in operation. The analyst documents the activities and verifies these actions to prevent remote exploitation of the vulnerability.
Which of the following would be the MOST appropriate to remediate the controller?
A. Segment the network to constrain access to administrative interfaces.
B. Replace the equipment that has third-party support.
C. Remove the legacy hardware from the network.
D. Install an IDS on the network between the switch and the legacy equipment.
A. Segment the network to constrain access to administrative interfaces.
A small electronics company decides to use a contractor to assist with the development of a new FPGA-based device. Several of the development phases will occur off-site at the contractor’s labs.
Which of the following is the main concern a security analyst should have with this arrangement?
A. Making multiple trips between development sites increases the chance of physical damage to the FPGAs.
B. Moving the FPGAs between development sites will lessen the time that is available for security testing.
C. Development phases occurring at multiple sites may produce change management issues.
D. FPGA applications are easily cloned, increasing the possibility of intellectual property theft.
D. FPGA applications are easily cloned, increasing the possibility of intellectual property theft.
A security analyst is trying to determine if a host is active on a network. The analyst first attempts the following:
“In the example, regular ping didnt work
2nd time, used sudo hping3 and it worked. Flags returned RA”
The analyst runs the following command next:
Which of the following would explain the difference in results?
A. ICMP is being blocked by a firewall.
RA flag = indicates that the communication is blocked because ICMP is being blocked by a firewall.
A cybersecurity analyst is contributing to a team hunt on an organization’s endpoints. Which of the following should the analyst do FIRST?
A. Write detection logic.
B. Establish a hypothesis.
C. Profile the threat actors and activities.
D. Perform a process analysis.
B. Establish a hypothesis.
A security analyst received a SIEM alert regarding high levels of memory consumption for a critical system. After several attempts to remediate the issue, the system went down. A root cause analysis revealed a bad actor forced the application to not reclaim memory. This caused the system to be depleted of resources.
Which of the following BEST describes this attack?
A. Injection attack
B. Memory corruption
C. Denial of service
D. Array attack
B. Memory corruption
Which of the following software security best practices would prevent an attacker from being able to run arbitrary SQL commands within a web application?
(Choose two.)
A. Parameterized queries B. Session management C. Input validation D. Output encoding E. Data protection F. Authentication
A. Parameterized queries
C. Input validation
A cyber-incident response analyst is investigating a suspected cryptocurrency miner on a company’s server.
Which of the following is the FIRST step the analyst should take?
A. Create a full disk image of the server’s hard drive to look for the file containing the malware.
B. Run a manual antivirus scan on the machine to look for known malicious software.
C. Take a memory snapshot of the machine to capture volatile information stored in memory.
D. Start packet capturing to look for traffic that could be indicative of command and control from the miner.
D. Start packet capturing to look for traffic that could be indicative of command and control from the miner.
An information security analyst is compiling data from a recent penetration test and reviews the following output:
The analyst wants to obtain more information about the web-based services that are running on the target.
Which of the following commands would MOST likely provide the needed information?
A. ping -t 10.79.95.173.rdns.datacenters.com
B. telnet 10.79.95.173 443
C. ftpd 10.79.95.173.rdns.datacenters.com 443
D. tracert 10.79.95.173
B. telnet 10.79.95.173 443
A compliance officer of a large organization has reviewed the firm’s vendor management program but has discovered there are no controls defined to evaluate third-party risk or hardware source authenticity. The compliance officer wants to gain some level of assurance on a recurring basis regarding the implementation of controls by third parties.
Which of the following would BEST satisfy the objectives defined by the compliance officer? (Choose two.)
A. Executing vendor compliance assessments against the organization’s security controls
B. Executing NDAs prior to sharing critical data with third parties
C. Soliciting third-party audit reports on an annual basis
D. Maintaining and reviewing the organizational risk assessment on a quarterly basis
E. Completing a business impact assessment for all critical service providers
F. Utilizing DLP capabilities at both the endpoint and perimeter levels
A. Executing vendor compliance assessments against the organization’s security controls
C. Soliciting third-party audit reports on an annual basis
An audit has revealed an organization is utilizing a large number of servers that are running unsupported operating systems.
As part of the management response phase of the audit, which of the following would BEST demonstrate senior management is appropriately aware of and addressing the issue?
A. Copies of prior audits that did not identify the servers as an issue
B. Project plans relating to the replacement of the servers that were approved by management
C. Minutes from meetings in which risk assessment activities addressing the servers were discussed
D. ACLs from perimeter firewalls showing blocked access to the servers
E. Copies of change orders relating to the vulnerable servers
B. Project plans relating to the replacement of the servers that were approved by management
A security analyst is reviewing packet captures from a system that was compromised. The system was already isolated from the network, but it did have network access for a few hours after being compromised. When viewing the capture in a packet analyzer, the analyst sees the following:
Which of the following can the analyst conclude?
A. Malware is attempting to beacon to 128.50.100.3.
B. The system is running a DoS attack against ajgidwle.com.
C. The system is scanning ajgidwle.com for PII.
D. Data is being exfiltrated over DNS.
D. Data is being exfiltrated over DNS.
It is important to parameterize queries to prevent __________.
A. the execution of unauthorized actions against a database.
B. a memory overflow that executes code with elevated privileges.
C. the establishment of a web shell that would allow unauthorized access.
D. the queries from using an outdated library with security vulnerabilities.
A. the execution of unauthorized actions against a database.
A security analyst reviews the following aggregated output from an Nmap scan and the border firewall ACL:
Which of the following should the analyst reconfigure to BEST reduce organizational risk while maintaining current functionality?
A. PC1 B. PC2 C. Server1 D. Server2 E. Firewall
E. Firewall
During an investigation, a security analyst determines suspicious activity occurred during the night shift over the weekend. Further investigation reveals the activity was initiated from an internal IP going to an external website.
Which of the following would be the MOST appropriate recommendation to prevent the activity from happening in the future?
A. An IPS signature modification for the specific IP addresses
B. An IDS signature modification for the specific IP addresses
C. A firewall rule that will block port 80 traffic
D. A firewall rule that will block traffic from the specific IP addresses
D. A firewall rule that will block traffic from the specific IP addresses
A security analyst has received reports of very slow, intermittent access to a public-facing corporate server. Suspecting the system may be compromised, the analyst runs the following commands:
Based on the output from the above commands, which of the following should the analyst do NEXT to further the investigation?
A. Run crontab -r; rm -rf /tmp/.t to remove and disable the malware on the system.
B. Examine the server logs for further indicators of compromise of a web application.
C. Run kill -9 1325 to bring the load average down so the server is usable again.
D. Perform a binary analysis on the /tmp/.t/t file, as it is likely to be a rogue SSHD server.
B. Examine the server logs for further indicators of compromise of a web application.
A Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) wants to upgrade an organization’s security posture by improving proactive activities associated with attacks from internal and external threats.
Which of the following is the MOST proactive tool or technique that feeds incident response capabilities?
A. Development of a hypothesis as part of threat hunting
B. Log correlation, monitoring, and automated reporting through a SIEM platform
C. Continuous compliance monitoring using SCAP dashboards
D. Quarterly vulnerability scanning using credentialed scans
A. Development of a hypothesis as part of threat hunting
While planning segmentation for an ICS environment, a security engineer determines IT resources will need access to devices within the ICS environment without compromising security.
To provide the MOST secure access model in this scenario, the jumpbox should be __________.
A. placed in an isolated network segment, authenticated on the IT side, and forwarded into the ICS network.
B. placed on the ICS network with a static firewall rule that allows IT network resources to authenticate.
C. bridged between the IT and operational technology networks to allow authenticated access.
D. placed on the IT side of the network, authenticated, and tunneled into the ICS environment.
A. placed in an isolated network segment, authenticated on the IT side, and forwarded into the ICS network.
A development team uses open-source software and follows an Agile methodology with two-week sprints. Last month, the security team filed a bug for an insecure version of a common library. The DevOps team updated the library on the server, and then the security team rescanned the server to verify it was no longer vulnerable. This month, the security team found the same vulnerability on the server.
Which of the following should be done to correct the cause of the vulnerability?
A. Deploy a WAF in front of the application.
B. Implement a software repository management tool.
C. Install a HIPS on the server.
D. Instruct the developers to use input validation in the code.
B. Implement a software repository management tool.
A security analyst is reviewing the logs from an internal chat server. The chat.log file is too large to review manually, so the analyst wants to create a shorter log file that only includes lines associated with a user demonstrating anomalous activity. Below is a snippet of the log:
Which of the following commands would work BEST to achieve the desired result? A. grep -v chatter14 chat.log B. grep -i pythonfun chat.log C. grep -i javashark chat.log D. grep -v javashark chat.log E. grep -v pythonfun chat.log F. grep -i chatter14 chat.log
D. grep -v javashark chat.log
An analyst is participating in the solution analysis process for a cloud-hosted SIEM platform to centralize log monitoring and alerting capabilities in the SOC.
Which of the following is the BEST approach for supply chain assessment when selecting a vendor?
A. Gather information from providers, including datacenter specifications and copies of audit reports.
B. Identify SLA requirements for monitoring and logging.
C. Consult with senior management for recommendations.
D. Perform a proof of concept to identify possible solutions.
B. Identify SLA requirements for monitoring and logging.
A security technician is testing a solution that will prevent outside entities from spoofing the company’s email domain, which is comptia.org. The testing is successful, and the security technician is prepared to fully implement the solution.
Which of the following actions should the technician take to accomplish this task?
A. Add TXT @ “v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org גˆ’all” to the DNS record.
B. Add TXT @ “v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org גˆ’all” to the email server.
C. Add TXT @ “v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org +all” to the domain controller.
D. Add TXT @ “v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org +all” to the web server.
A. Add TXT @ “v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org גˆ’all” to the DNS record.
A security analyst on the threat-hunting team has developed a list of unneeded, benign services that are currently running as part of the standard OS deployment for workstations. The analyst will provide this list to the operations team to create a policy that will automatically disable the services for all workstations in the organization.
Which of the following BEST describes the security analyst’s goal?
A. To create a system baseline
B. To reduce the attack surface
C. To optimize system performance
D. To improve malware detection
B. To reduce the attack surface
Which of the following roles is ultimately responsible for determining the classification levels assigned to specific data sets?
A. Data custodian
B. Data owner
C. Data processor
D. Senior management
B. Data owner
A security analyst suspects a malware infection was caused by a user who downloaded malware after clicking http:///a.php in a phishing email.
To prevent other computers from being infected by the same malware variation, the analyst should create a rule on the __________.
A. email server that automatically deletes attached executables.
B. IDS to match the malware sample.
C. proxy to block all connections to .
D. firewall to block connection attempts to dynamic DNS hosts.
C. proxy to block all connections to .
An information security analyst is reviewing backup data sets as part of a project focused on eliminating archival data sets.
Which of the following should be considered FIRST prior to disposing of the electronic data?
A. Sanitization policy
B. Data sovereignty
C. Encryption policy
D. Retention standards
D. Retention standards
A security analyst is evaluating two vulnerability management tools for possible use in an organization. The analyst set up each of the tools according to the respective vendor’s instructions and generated a report of vulnerabilities that ran against the same target server.
Tool A reported the following:
Tool B reported the following:
Which of the following BEST describes the method used by each tool? (Choose two.)
A. Tool A is agent based.
B. Tool A used fuzzing logic to test vulnerabilities.
C. Tool A is unauthenticated.
D. Tool B utilized machine learning technology.
E. Tool B is agent based.
F. Tool B is unauthenticated.
A. Tool A is agent based.
F. Tool B is unauthenticated.
A security analyst received an alert from the SIEM indicating numerous login attempts from users outside their usual geographic zones, all of which were initiated through the web-based mail server. The logs indicate all domain accounts experienced two login attempts during the same time frame.
Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this issue?
A. A password-spraying attack was performed against the organization.
B. A DDoS attack was performed against the organization.
C. This was normal shift work activity; the SIEM’s AI is learning.
D. A credentialed external vulnerability scan was performed.
A. A password-spraying attack was performed against the organization.
During an investigation, a security analyst identified machines that are infected with malware the antivirus was unable to detect.
Which of the following is the BEST place to acquire evidence to perform data carving?
A. The system memory
B. The hard drive
C. Network packets
D. The Windows Registry
A. The system memory
fileless malware leaves no footprint
A cybersecurity analyst has access to several threat feeds and wants to organize them while simultaneously comparing intelligence against network traffic.
Which of the following would BEST accomplish this goal?
A. Continuous integration and deployment
B. Automation and orchestration
C. Static and dynamic analysis
D. Information sharing and analysis
B. Automation and orchestration
A storage area network (SAN) was inadvertently powered off while power maintenance was being performed in a datacenter. None of the systems should have lost all power during the maintenance. Upon review, it is discovered that a SAN administrator moved a power plug when testing the SAN’s fault notification features.
Which of the following should be done to prevent this issue from reoccurring?
A. Ensure both power supplies on the SAN are serviced by separate circuits, so that if one circuit goes down, the other remains powered.
B. Install additional batteries in the SAN power supplies with enough capacity to keep the system powered on during maintenance operations.
C. Ensure power configuration is covered in the datacenter change management policy and have the SAN administrator review this policy.
D. Install a third power supply in the SAN so loss of any power intuit does not result in the SAN completely powering off.
C. Ensure power configuration is covered in the datacenter change management policy and have the SAN administrator review this policy.
A security analyst is providing a risk assessment for a medical device that will be installed on the corporate network. During the assessment, the analyst discovers the device has an embedded operating system that will be at the end of its life in two years. Due to the criticality of the device, the security committee makes a risk-based policy decision to review and enforce the vendor upgrade before the end of life is reached.
Which of the following risk actions has the security committee taken?
A. Risk exception
B. Risk avoidance
C. Risk tolerance
D. Risk acceptance
D. Risk acceptance
During a cyber incident, which of the following is the BEST course of action?
A. Switch to using a pre-approved, secure, third-party communication system.
B. Keep the entire company informed to ensure transparency and integrity during the incident.
C. Restrict customer communication until the severity of the breach is confirmed.
D. Limit communications to pre-authorized parties to ensure response efforts remain confidential.
D. Limit communications to pre-authorized parties to ensure response efforts remain confidential.
Which of the following BEST describes the process by which code is developed, tested, and deployed in small batches?
A. Agile
B. Waterfall
C. SDLC
D. Dynamic code analysis
A. Agile
Which of the following types of policies is used to regulate data storage on the network?
A. Password
B. Acceptable use
C. Account management
D. Retention
D. Retention
A security team wants to make SaaS solutions accessible from only the corporate campus.
Which of the following would BEST accomplish this goal?
A. Geofencing
B. IP restrictions
C. Reverse proxy
D. Single sign-on
A. Geofencing
Data spillage occurred when an employee accidentally emailed a sensitive file to an external recipient.
Which of the following controls would have MOST likely prevented this incident?
A. SSO
B. DLP
C. WAF
D. VDI
B. DLP
A security analyst has received information from a third-party intelligence-sharing resource that indicates employee accounts were breached.
Which of the following is the NEXT step the analyst should take to address the issue?
A. Audit access permissions for all employees to ensure least privilege.
B. Force a password reset for the impacted employees and revoke any tokens.
C. Configure SSO to prevent passwords from going outside the local network.
D. Set up privileged access management to ensure auditing is enabled.
B. Force a password reset for the impacted employees and revoke any tokens.
A security analyst is building a malware analysis lab. The analyst wants to ensure malicious applications are not capable of escaping the virtual machines and pivoting to other networks.
To BEST mitigate this risk, the analyst should use __________.
A. an 802.11ac wireless bridge to create an air gap.
B. a managed switch to segment the lab into a separate VLAN.
C. a firewall to isolate the lab network from all other networks.
D. an unmanaged switch to segment the environments from one another.
B. a managed switch to segment the lab into a separate VLAN.
A security analyst for a large financial institution is creating a threat model for a specific threat actor that is likely targeting an organization’s financial assets.
Which of the following is the BEST example of the level of sophistication this threat actor is using?
A. Social media accounts attributed to the threat actor
B. Custom malware attributed to the threat actor from prior attacks
C. Email addresses and phone numbers tied to the threat actor
D. Network assets used in previous attacks attributed to the threat actor
E. IP addresses used by the threat actor for command and control
B. Custom malware attributed to the threat actor from prior attacks
Bootloader malware was recently discovered on several company workstations. All the workstations run Windows and are current models with UEFI capability.
Which of the following UEFI settings is the MOST likely cause of the infections?
A. Compatibility mode
B. Secure boot mode
C. Native mode
D. Fast boot mode
A. Compatibility mode
The security team at a large corporation is helping the payment-processing team to prepare for a regulatory compliance audit and meet the following objectives:
✑ Reduce the number of potential findings by the auditors.
✑ Limit the scope of the audit to only devices used by the payment-processing team for activities directly impacted by the regulations.
✑ Prevent the external-facing web infrastructure used by other teams from coming into scope.
✑ Limit the amount of exposure the company will face if the systems used by the payment-processing team are compromised.
Which of the following would be the MOST effective way for the security team to meet these objectives?
A. Limit the permissions to prevent other employees from accessing data owned by the business unit.
B. Segment the servers and systems used by the business unit from the rest of the network.
C. Deploy patches to all servers and workstations across the entire organization.
D. Implement full-disk encryption on the laptops used by employees of the payment-processing team.
B. Segment the servers and systems used by the business unit from the rest of the network.
During routine monitoring, a security analyst discovers several suspicious websites that are communicating with a local host. The analyst queries for IP
192.168.50.2 for a 24-hour period:
To further investigate, the analyst should request PCAP for SRC 192.168.50.2 and \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_. A. DST 138.10.2.5. B. DST 138.10.25.5. C. DST 172.10.3.5. D. DST 172.10.45.5. E. DST 175.35.20.5.
C. DST 172.10.3.5.
For machine learning to be applied effectively toward security analysis automation, it requires __________.
A. relevant training data.
B. a threat feed API.
C. a multicore, multiprocessor system.
D. anomalous traffic signatures.
D. anomalous traffic signatures.
A large amount of confidential data was leaked during a recent security breach. As part of a forensic investigation, the security team needs to identify the various types of traffic that were captured between two compromised devices.
Which of the following should be used to identify the traffic?
A. Carving B. Disk imaging C. Packet analysis D. Memory dump E. Hashing
C. Packet analysis
Which of the following sets of attributes BEST illustrates the characteristics of an insider threat from a security perspective?
A. Unauthorized, unintentional, benign
B. Unauthorized, intentional, malicious
C. Authorized, intentional, malicious
D. Authorized, unintentional, benign
C. Authorized, intentional, malicious
A security analyst has observed several incidents within an organization that are affecting one specific piece of hardware on the network. Further investigation reveals the equipment vendor previously released a patch.
Which of the following is the MOST appropriate threat classification for these incidents?
A. Known threat
B. Zero day
C. Unknown threat
D. Advanced persistent threat
A. Known threat
An incident responder successfully acquired application binaries off a mobile device for later forensic analysis.
Which of the following should the analyst do NEXT?
A. Decompile each binary to derive the source code.
B. Perform a factory reset on the affected mobile device.
C. Compute SHA-256 hashes for each binary.
D. Encrypt the binaries using an authenticated AES-256 mode of operation.
E. Inspect the permissions manifests within each application.
C. Compute SHA-256 hashes for each binary.
A security analyst needs to reduce the overall attack surface.
Which of the following infrastructure changes should the analyst recommend?
A. Implement a honeypot.
B. Air gap sensitive systems.
C. Increase the network segmentation.
D. Implement a cloud-based architecture.
C. Increase the network segmentation.
A security analyst is reviewing the following log from an email security service.
Which of the following BEST describes the reason why the email was blocked?
A. The To address is invalid.
B. The email originated from the www.spamfilter.org URL.
C. The IP address and the remote server name are the same.
D. The IP address was blacklisted.
E. The From address is invalid.
D. The IP address was blacklisted.
A user’s computer has been running slowly when the user tries to access web pages. A security analyst runs the command netstat -aon from the command line and receives the following output:
Which of the following lines indicates the computer may be compromised?
A. Line 1 B. Line 2 C. Line 3 D. Line 4 E. Line 5 F. Line 6
C. Line 3
As part of an exercise set up by the information security officer, the IT staff must move some of the network systems to an off-site facility and redeploy them for testing. All staff members must ensure their respective systems can power back up and match their gold image. If they find any inconsistencies, they must formally document the information.
Which of the following BEST describes this test?
A. Walk through
B. Full interruption
C. Simulation
D. Parallel
D. Parallel
A security analyst is reviewing a web application. If an unauthenticated user tries to access a page in the application, the user is redirected to the login page. After successful authentication, the user is then redirected back to the original page. Some users have reported receiving phishing emails with a link that takes them to the application login page but then redirects to a fake login page after successful authentication.
Which of the following will remediate this software vulnerability?
A. Enforce unique session IDs for the application.
B. Deploy a WAF in front of the web application.
C. Check for and enforce the proper domain for the redirect.
D. Use a parameterized query to check the credentials.
E. Implement email filtering with anti-phishing protection.
C. Check for and enforce the proper domain for the redirect.
A Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is concerned the development team, which consists of contractors, has too much access to customer data. Developers use personal workstations, giving the company little to no visibility into the development activities.
Which of the following would be BEST to implement to alleviate the CISO’s concern?
A. DLP
B. Encryption
C. Test data
D. NDA
C. Test data
A company was recently awarded several large government contracts and wants to determine its current risk from one specific APT.
Which of the following threat modeling methodologies would be the MOST appropriate to use during this analysis?
A. Attack vectors B. Adversary capability C. Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis D. Kill chain E. Total attack surface
B. Adversary capability
A security analyst is reviewing vulnerability scan results and notices new workstations are being flagged as having outdated antivirus signatures. The analyst observes the following plugin output:
Antivirus is installed on the remote host:
Installation path: C:\Program Files\AVProduct\Win32\
Product Engine: 14.12.101 -
Engine Version: 3.5.71 -
Scanner does not currently have information about AVProduct version 3.5.71. It may no longer be supported.
The engine version is out of date. The oldest supported version from the vendor is 4.2.11.
The analyst uses the vendor’s website to confirm the oldest supported version is correct.
Which of the following BEST describes the situation?
A. This is a false positive, and the scanning plugin needs to be updated by the vendor.
B. This is a true negative, and the new computers have the correct version of the software.
C. This is a true positive, and the new computers were imaged with an old version of the software.
D. This is a false negative, and the new computers need to be updated by the desktop team.
C. This is a true positive, and the new computers were imaged with an old version of the software.
A SIEM solution alerts a security analyst of a high number of login attempts against the company’s webmail portal. The analyst determines the login attempts used credentials from a past data breach.
Which of the following is the BEST mitigation to prevent unauthorized access?
A. Single sign-on B. Mandatory access control C. Multifactor authentication D. Federation E. Privileged access management
C. Multifactor authentication
A product manager is working with an analyst to design a new application that will perform as a data analytics platform and will be accessible via a web browser.
The product manager suggests using a PaaS provider to host the application.
Which of the following is a security concern when using a PaaS solution?
A. The use of infrastructure-as-code capabilities leads to an increased attack surface.
B. Patching the underlying application server becomes the responsibility of the client.
C. The application is unable to use encryption at the database level.
D. Insecure application programming interfaces can lead to data compromise.
D. Insecure application programming interfaces can lead to data compromise.
Because some clients have reported unauthorized activity on their accounts, a security analyst is reviewing network packet captures from the company’s API server. A portion of a capture file is shown below:
POST /services/v1_0/Public/Members.svc/soap
s:Envelope> 192.168.1.22 - - api.somesite.com 200 0 1006 1001 0 192.168.1.22
POST /services/v1_0/Public/Members.svc/soap 192.168.5.66 - - api.somesite.com 200 0 11558 1712 2024 192.168.4.89
POST /services/v1_0/Public/Members.svc/soap 516.7.446.605 192.168.1.22 - - api.somesite.com 200 0 1003 1011 307
192.168.1.22
POST /services/v1_0/Public/Members.svc/soap
kmL4krg2CwwWBan5BReGv5Djb7syxXTNKcWFuSjd0 a:ImpersonateUserId>161222 4’‘1=1 a:ProviderId>13026046 192.168.5.66
- - api.somesite.com 200 0 1378 1209 48 192.168.4.89
Which of the following MOST likely explains how the clients’ accounts were compromised?
A. The clients’ authentication tokens were impersonated and replayed.
B. The clients’ usernames and passwords were transmitted in cleartext.
C. An XSS scripting attack was carried out on the server.
D. A SQL injection attack was carried out on the server.
B. The clients’ usernames and passwords were transmitted in cleartext.
A monthly job to install approved vendor software updates and hot fixes recently stopped working. The security team performed a vulnerability scan, which identified several hosts as having some critical OS vulnerabilities, as referenced in the common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) database.
Which of the following should the security team do NEXT to resolve the critical findings in the most effective manner? (Choose two.)
A. Patch the required hosts with the correct updates and hot fixes, and rescan them for vulnerabilities.
B. Remove the servers reported to have high and medium vulnerabilities.
C. Tag the computers with critical findings as a business risk acceptance.
D. Manually patch the computers on the network, as recommended on the CVE website.
E. Harden the hosts on the network, as recommended by the NIST framework.
F. Resolve the monthly job issues and test them before applying them to the production network.
A. Patch the required hosts with the correct updates and hot fixes, and rescan them for vulnerabilities.
F. Resolve the monthly job issues and test them before applying them to the production network.
A development team is testing a new application release. The team needs to import existing client PHI data records from the production environment to the test environment to test accuracy and functionality.
Which of the following would BEST protect the sensitivity of this data while still allowing the team to perform the testing?
A. Deidentification
B. Encoding
C. Encryption
D. Watermarking
A. Deidentification
A network attack that is exploiting a vulnerability in the SNMP is detected.
Which of the following should the cybersecurity analyst do FIRST?
A. Apply the required patches to remediate the vulnerability.
B. Escalate the incident to senior management for guidance.
C. Disable all privileged user accounts on the network.
D. Temporarily block the attacking IP address.
D. Temporarily block the attacking IP address.
An organization is moving its infrastructure to the cloud in an effort to meet the budget and reduce staffing requirements. The organization has three environments: development, testing, and production. These environments have interdependencies but must remain relatively segmented.
Which of the following methods would BEST secure the company’s infrastructure and be the simplest to manage and maintain?
A. Create three separate cloud accounts for each environment. Configure account peering and security rules to allow access to and from each environment.
B. Create one cloud account with one VPC for all environments. Purchase a virtual firewall and create granular security rules.
C. Create one cloud account and three separate VPCs for each environment. Create security rules to allow access to and from each environment.
D. Create three separate cloud accounts for each environment and a single core account for network services. Route all traffic through the core account.
C. Create one cloud account and three separate VPCs for each environment. Create security rules to allow access to and from each environment.
A pharmaceutical company’s marketing team wants to send out notifications about new products to alert users of recalls and newly discovered adverse drug reactions. The team plans to use the names and mailing addresses that users have provided.
Which of the following data privacy standards does this violate?
A. Purpose limitation
B. Sovereignty
C. Data minimization
D. Retention
A. Purpose limitation
A user receives a potentially malicious email that contains spelling errors and a PDF document. A security analyst reviews the email and decides to download the attachment to a Linux sandbox for review.
Which of the following commands would MOST likely indicate if the email is malicious?
A. sha256sum ~/Desktop/file.pdf
B. file ~/Desktop/file.pdf
C. strings ~/Desktop/file.pdf | grep “
A. sha256sum ~/Desktop/file.pdf
A development team signed a contract that requires access to an on-premises physical server. Access must be restricted to authorized users only and cannot be connected to the Internet.
Which of the following solutions would meet this requirement?
A. Establish a hosted SSO.
B. Implement a CASB.
C. Virtualize the server.
D. Air gap the server.
D. Air gap the server.
Simulation Question
REVIEW THIS
When attempting to do a stealth scan against a system that does not respond to ping, which of the following Nmap commands BEST accomplishes that goal?
A. nmap -sA -o -noping
B. nmap -sT -o -po
C. nmap -sS -o -po
D. nmap -sQ -o -po
C. nmap -sS -o -po
A team of security analysts has been alerted to potential malware activity. The initial examination indicates one of the affected workstations is beaconing on TCP port 80 to five IP addresses and attempting to spread across the network over port 445. Which of the following should be the teamג€™s NEXT step during the detection phase of this response process?
A. Escalate the incident to management, who will then engage the network infrastructure team to keep them informed.
B. Depending on system criticality, remove each affected device from the network by disabling wired and wireless connections.
C. Engage the engineering team to block SMB traffic internally and outbound HTTP traffic to the five IP addresses.
D. Identify potentially affected systems by creating a correlation search in the SIEM based on the network traffic.
D. Identify potentially affected systems by creating a correlation search in the SIEM based on the network traffic.
While analyzing logs from a WAF, a cybersecurity analyst finds the following:
ג€GET /form.php?id=463225%2b%2575%256e%2569%256f%256e%2b%2573%2574%2box3133333731,1223,1224&name=&state=ILג€
Which of the following BEST describes what the analyst has found?
A. This is an encrypted GET HTTP request
B. A packet is being used to bypass the WAF
C. This is an encrypted packet
D. This is an encoded WAF bypass
D. This is an encoded WAF bypass
A companyג€™s marketing emails are either being found in a spam folder or not being delivered at all. The security analyst investigates the issue and discovers the emails in question are being sent on behalf of the company by a third party, mail.marketing.com. Below is the existing SPF record: v=spf1 a mx -all
Which of the following updates to the SPF record will work BEST to prevent the emails from being marked as spam or blocked?
D. v=spf1 a mx include:mail.marketing.com ~all
A security analyst is reviewing the following web server log:
GET %2f..%2f..%2f.. %2f.. %2f.. %2f.. %2f../etc/passwd
Which of the following BEST describes the issue?
A. Directory traversal exploit
B. Cross-site scripting
C. SQL injection
D. Cross-site request forgery
A. Directory traversal exploit
A hybrid control is one that:
A. is implemented differently on individual systems
B. is implemented at the enterprise and system levels
C. has operational and technical components
D. authenticates using passwords and hardware tokens
B. is implemented at the enterprise and system levels
After a breach involving the exfiltration of a large amount of sensitive data, a security analyst is reviewing the following firewall logs to determine how the breach occurred:
Which of the following IP addresses does the analyst need to investigate further?
A. 192.168.1.1
B. 192.168.1.10
C. 192.168.1.12
D. 192.168.1.193
C. 192.168.1.12
A cybersecurity analyst is supporting an incident response effort via threat intelligence. Which of the following is the analyst MOST likely executing?
A. Requirements analysis and collection planning
B. Containment and eradication
C. Recovery and post-incident review
D. Indicator enrichment and research pivoting
A. Requirements analysis and collection planning
The inability to do remote updates of certificates, keys, software, and firmware is a security issue commonly associated with:
A. web servers on private networks
B. HVAC control systems
C. smartphones
D. firewalls and UTM devices
B. HVAC control systems
A security analyst is conducting a post-incident log analysis to determine which indicators can be used to detect further occurrences of a data exfiltration incident.
The analyst determines backups were not performed during this time and reviews the following:
Which of the following should the analyst review to find out how the data was exfiltrated?
A. Mondayג€™s logs
B. Tuesdayג€™s logs
C. Wednesdayג€™s logs
D. Thursdayג€™s logs
D. Thursdayג€™s logs
Which of the following BEST articulates the benefit of leveraging SCAP in an organizationג€™s cybersecurity analysis toolset?
A. It automatically performs remedial configuration changes to enterprise security services
B. It enables standard checklist and vulnerability analysis expressions for automation
C. It establishes a continuous integration environment for software development operations
D. It provides validation of suspected system vulnerabilities through workflow orchestration
B. It enables standard checklist and vulnerability analysis expressions for automation
Which of the following software assessment methods would be BEST for gathering data related to an applicationג€™s availability during peak times?
A. Security regression testing B. Stress testing C. Static analysis testing D. Dynamic analysis testing E. User acceptance testing
B. Stress testing
An information security analyst is working with a data owner to identify the appropriate controls to preserve the confidentiality of data within an enterprise environment. One of the primary concerns is exfiltration of data by malicious insiders. Which of the following controls is the MOST appropriate to mitigate risks?
A. Data deduplication
B. OS fingerprinting
C. Digital watermarking
D. Data loss prevention
D. Data loss prevention
A security analyst has discovered that developers have installed browsers on all development servers in the companyג€™s cloud infrastructure and are using them to browse the Internet. Which of the following changes should the security analyst make to BEST protect the environment?
A. Create a security rule that blocks Internet access in the development VPC
B. Place a jumpbox in between the developersג€™ workstations and the development VPC
C. Remove the administratorג€™s profile from the developer user group in identity and access management
D. Create an alert that is triggered when a developer installs an application on a server
A. Create a security rule that blocks Internet access in the development VPC
An organization that handles sensitive financial information wants to perform tokenization of data to enable the execution of recurring transactions. The organization is most interested in a secure, built-in device to support its solution. Which of the following would MOST likely be required to perform the desired function?
A. TPM B. eFuse C. FPGA D. HSM E. UEFI
A. TPM
Keyword is built in
An organization has not had an incident for several months. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) wants to move to a more proactive stance for security investigations. Which of the following would BEST meet that goal?
A. Root-cause analysis B. Active response C. Advanced antivirus D. Information-sharing community E. Threat hunting
E. Threat hunting
An analyst is investigating an anomalous event reported by the SOC. After reviewing the system logs, the analyst identifies an unexpected addition of a user with root-level privileges on the endpoint. Which of the following data sources will BEST help the analyst to determine whether this event constitutes an incident?
A. Patching logs B. Threat feed C. Backup logs D. Change requests E. Data classification matrix
D. Change requests
A security analyst discovers a vulnerability on an unpatched web server that is used for testing machine learning on Big Data sets. Exploitation of the vulnerability could cost the organization $1.5 million in lost productivity. The server is located on an isolated network segment that has a 5% chance of being compromised.
Which of the following is the value of this risk?
A. $75,000
B. $300,000
C. $1.425 million
D. $1.5 million
A. $75,000
Risk = Threat x Vulnerability (to that threat)
A security analyst is investigating a system compromise. The analyst verifies the system was up to date on OS patches at the time of the compromise. Which of the following describes the type of vulnerability that was MOST likely exploited?
A. Insider threat
B. Buffer overflow
C. Advanced persistent threat
D. Zero day
D. Zero day
An organization developed a comprehensive incident response policy. Executive management approved the policy and its associated procedures. Which of the following activities would be MOST beneficial to evaluate personnelג€™s familiarity with incident response procedures?
A. A simulated breach scenario involving the incident response team
B. Completion of annual information security awareness training by all employees
C. Tabletop activities involving business continuity team members
D. Completion of lessons-learned documentation by the computer security incident response team
E. External and internal penetration testing by a third party
A. A simulated breach scenario involving the incident response team
A cybersecurity analyst is responding to an incident. The companyג€™s leadership team wants to attribute the incident to an attack group. Which of the following models would BEST apply to the situation?
A. Intelligence cycle
B. Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis
C. Kill chain
D. MITRE ATT&CK
D. MITRE ATT&CK
Which of the following would a security engineer recommend to BEST protect sensitive system data from being accessed on mobile devices?
A. Use a UEFI boot password
B. Implement a self-encrypted disk
C. Configure filesystem encryption
D. Enable Secure Boot using TPM
C. Configure filesystem encryption
A security analyst implemented a solution that would analyze the attacks that the organizationג€™s firewalls failed to prevent. The analyst used the existing systems to enact the solution and executed the following command:
$ sudo nc -1 ג€”v ג€”e maildaemon.py 25 > caplog.txt
Which of the following solutions did the analyst implement? A. Log collector B. Crontab mail script C. Sinkhole D. Honeypot
A. Log collector
Which of the following will allow different cloud instances to share various types of data with a minimal amount of complexity?
A. Reverse engineering B. Application log collectors C. Workflow orchestration D. API integration E. Scripting
D. API integration
A finance department employee has received a message that appears to have been sent from the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), asking the employee to perform a wire transfer. Analysis of the email shows the message came from an external source and is fraudulent. Which of the following would work BEST to improve the likelihood of employees quickly recognizing fraudulent emails?
A. Implementing a sandboxing solution for viewing emails and attachments
B. Limiting email from the finance department to recipients on a pre-approved whitelist
C. Configuring email client settings to display all messages in plaintext when read
D. Adding a banner to incoming messages that identifies the messages as external
D. Adding a banner to incoming messages that identifies the messages as external
A security analyst wants to identify which vulnerabilities a potential attacker might initially exploit if the network is compromised. Which of the following would provide the BEST results?
A. Baseline configuration assessment
B. Uncredentialed scan
C. Network ping sweep
D. External penetration test
B. Uncredentialed scan
An analyst has been asked to provide feedback regarding the controls required by a revised regulatory framework. At this time, the analyst only needs to focus on the technical controls.
Which of the following should the analyst provide an assessment of?
A. Tokenization of sensitive data
B. Establishment of data classifications
C. Reporting on data retention and purging activities
D. Formal identification of data ownership
E. Execution of NDAs
A. Tokenization of sensitive data
A cybersecurity analyst needs to rearchitect the network using a firewall and a VPN server to achieve the highest level of security. To BEST complete this task, the analyst should place the:
A. firewall behind the VPN server
B. VPN server parallel to the firewall
C. VPN server behind the firewall
D. VPN on the firewall
C. VPN server behind the firewall
Which of the following policies would state an employee should not disable security safeguards, such as host firewalls and antivirus, on company systems?
A. Code of conduct policy
B. Account management policy
C. Password policy
D. Acceptable use policy
D. Acceptable use policy
As part of a review of incident response plans, which of the following is MOST important for an organization to understand when establishing the breach notification period?
A. Organizational policies
B. Vendor requirements and contracts
C. Service-level agreements
D. Legal requirements
D. Legal requirements
A security analyst discovers accounts in sensitive SaaS-based systems are not being removed in a timely manner when an employee leaves the organization. To
BEST resolve the issue, the organization should implement:
A. federated authentication
B. role-based access control
C. manual account reviews
D. multifactor authentication
A. federated authentication
