Section 3: Investigating Identity and Access Management

Question 1

What is the most common form of authentication that is most likely to be entered incorrectly?

Answer 1

A password; the user may forget the password or may have Caps Lock on by accident.

Question 2

When you purchase a new wireless access point, what should you do first?

Answer 2

Change the default username and password; many default credentials are available on the internet.

Question 3

What is password history?

Answer 3

Determines the number of passwords you can use before you can reuse your current password. Some third-party applications or systems may call this a “password reuse” list.

Question 4

How can you prevent someone from reusing the same password?

Answer 4

Set up password history and combine with a minimum password age to prevent reuse.

Question 5

Explain what a complex password requires.

Answer 5

Uses three of the following:
- Uppercase and lowercase letters
- Numbers
- Special characters not used in programming

Question 6

How can you prevent a hacker from inserting a different password many times?

Answer 6

Set up an account lockout with a low value like 3. The hacker would need to guess the password within 3 attempts, otherwise the password is locked out and user account disabled.

Question 7

What type of factor authentication is a smart card?

Answer 7

Multi-factor authentication.
- The card is something you have
- Inserting it into a card reader is something you do
- The PIN is something you know

Question 8

How many factors is it if you have a password, PIN, and date of birth?

Answer 8

Single-factor. These are all factors that you know.

Question 9

What is biometric authentication?

Answer 9

The use of a part of your body or voice for authentication. (iris, retina, palm, fingerprint)

Question 10

What authentication method can be used by two third parties that participate in a joint venture?

Answer 10

Federation services. FS uses Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML) and extended attributes, like an employee’s ID or email address.

Question 11

Name an XML-based authentication protocol.

Answer 11

Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML). Used with federation services.

Question 12

What is Shibboleth?

Answer 12

Open-source Federation Services protocol.

Question 13

What protocol is used to store and search for Active Directory objects?

Answer 13

Lightweight Directory Authentication Protocol (LDAP). Used to store objects in X500 format and search Active Directory objects such as users, printers, groups or computers.

Question 14

What is the format of a distinguished name for a user called Fred who works in the IT department for a company with a domain called Company A that is a dotcom?

Answer 14

A distinguished name in the ITU X500 object format is:
“cn=Fred, ou=IT, dc=Company, dc=Com”

Question 15

What authentication factor uses tickets, timestamps, and updated sequence numbers and is used to prevent replay attacks?

Answer 15

Kerberos authentication. Also prevents pass-the-hash attacks as it does not use NTLM but stores the account details in an encrypted database.

Question 16

What is a Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT) session?

Answer 16

A TGT session is a process by which a user logs in to an Active Directory domain using Kerberos authentication and receives a service ticket.

Question 17

What is single sign-on? Give two examples.

Answer 17

An authentication scheme wherein a user inserts their credentials only once and access different resources like emails and files without needing to re-enter their creds.

Examples:
- Kerberos
- Federation Services

Question 18

How can you prevent a pass-the-hash attack?

Answer 18

Enable Kerberos or disabling NTLM. Pass-the-hash attacks exploit older systems that use NT Lan Manager (NTLM).

Question 19

Give an example of when you would use Open ID Connect.

Answer 19

To access a device or portal using Facebook, Twitter, Google or Hotmail creds. The portal itself does not manage the account.

Question 20

Name two AAA servers and the ports associated with them.

Answer 20

RADIUS: uses UDP port 1812 and is seen as non-proprietary.
TACACS+: uses TCP port 49
Diameter: modern secure form of RADIUS, TCP-based and uses EAP

Question 21

What is used for accounting in an AAA server?

Answer 21

Accounting is the documentation of when someone logs in and out, typically for billing purposes. Accounting information is typically logged into a database like SQL. RADIUS uses UDP port 1813.

Question 22

What is the purpose of a VPN solution?

Answer 22

Create a secure connection from a remote location to your corporate network or vice versa. The most secure tunneling protocol is L2TP/IPsec.

Question 23

Why should you never use PAP authentication?

Answer 23

PAP authentication uses a password in clear test which could be captured easily by a packet sniffer.

Question 24

What type of device is an iris scanner?

Answer 24

Physical device use for biometric authentication.

Question 25

Name two possible weaknesses of facial recognition software?

Answer 25

Affected by light
Turning your head slightly to one side
Older systems erroneously accept photographs

Microsoft Windows Hello is more secure using infrared an is not fooled by photographs or affected by light.

Question 26

What is Type II in biometric authentication and why is it a security risk?

Answer 26

Type II is False Acceptance Rate (FAR). People not permitted to access the network are given access.

Question 27

Name a time-limited password type.

Answer 27

Time-Based One-Time Password (TOTP), which has a 30-60 second time limit.

Question 28

How many times can you use an HOTP password? Is there a time restriction associated with it?

Answer 28

HOTP is a one-time password that does not expire until used.

Question 29

How does a CAC differ from a smart card and who uses CAC?

Answer 29

Both use certificates but CAC is used by military and has a picture, details of the user, blood group and Geneva convention category.

Question 30

What is a port-based authentication that authenticates both users and devices?

Answer 30

IEE802.1x

Question 31

What type of account is a service account?

Answer 31

A type of administrative account that allows an application to have a higher level of privileges to run on a desktop or server.

Question 32

How many accounts should a system administrator for a multinational corporation have and why?

Answer 32

Two accounts:
- A user account for day-to-day tasks
- An administrative account for administrative tasks

Question 33

What do you need to do when you purchase a baby monitor and why?

Answer 33

Rename the default administrative account and change default password. Baby monitors are IoT devices.

Question 34

What is a privileged account?

Answer 34

An account with administrative rights.

Question 35

What is the drawback for security if the company uses shared accounts?

Answer 35

Employees cannot be traced. Shared accounts should be eliminated for monitoring and auditing.

Question 36

What is a default account? Is it a security risk?

Answer 36

Default accounts/passwords for devices and software that can be found on the internet and used to hack your network or home devices.

Question 37

The system administrator in a multinational corporation creates a user account using an employee’s first name and last name. Why are they using the same details from each person?

Answer 37

Standard naming convention.

Question 38

What two actions do you need to complete when John Smith leaves the company?

Answer 38

1. Disable his account and reset password
2. Delete the account to prevent access to data he used

Question 39

What is account recertification?

Answer 39

An audit of user accounts and permissions that are usually carried out by an auditor. Also referred to as “user account review.”

Question 40

What is the purpose of a user account review?

Answer 40

Ensures that old accounts have been deleted and that all current users have the appropriate access to resources and not a higher level of privilege.

Question 41

What can you implement to find out immediately when a user is placed in a group that may give them a higher level of privileges?

Answer 41

A SIEM can carry out active monitoring and notify administrators of any changes to user accounts/logs.

Question 42

What will be the two possible outcomes if an auditor finds any working practices that do not conform to the company policy?

Answer 42

1. Change management
2. New policy will be put in place

Question 43

If a contractor brings in five consultants for two months of mail server migration, how should you set up their accounts?

Answer 43

Contractor accounts should have an expiry date equal to the last day of the contract.

Question 44

How can you ensure that the contractors in Question 43 can only access the company network from 9am-5pm daily?

Answer 44

Adopt rule-based access rules.

Question 45

If you have a company that has five consultants who work in different shift patterns, how can you set up their accounts so that each of them can only access the network during their individual shifts?

Answer 45

Time and day restrictions should be set up against each individual’s user account that matches their shift pattern.

Question 46

A brute-force attack cracks a password using all combinations of characters and will eventually crack a password. What can you do to prevent a brute force attack?

Answer 46

Account Lockout with a low value.

Question 47

The IT team has a global group called IT Admin; each member of the IT team is a member of this group and therefore has full control access to the departmental data. Two new apprentices are joining the company and they need to have read access to the IT data. How can you achieve this with the minimum amount of administrative effort?

Answer 47

Create a new group called “IT Apprentices” and add the apprentices’ accounts to the group. Give this group read access to the IT data.

Question 48

You have different login details and passwords to access Airbnb, Twitter and Facebook, but you keep getting them mixed up and have locked yourself out of these accounts from time to time. What can you implement on your Windows 10 laptop to help you?

Answer 48

The credential manager can be used to store generic and Windows 10 accounts.

Question 49

You have moved departments, but the employees in your old department still use your old account for access; what should the company have done to prevent this from happening? What should their next action be?

Answer 49

The company should disable the account and reset the password. An account review should follow to find similar accounts.

Question 50

What is the purpose of the ssh-copy-id command?

Answer 50

To copy and install the public key on the SSH server and add it to the list of authorized keys.

Question 51

Describe the process of impossible time travel?

Answer 51

A user logs in to a device from one location, then from another location shortly afterward, where it would be impossible to travel that distance in the time between logins.

Question 52

When you log in to your Dropbox account from my phone, you get an email asking you to confirm that this was a legal login. What have you been subjected to?

Answer 52

Risky login; you have used a secondary device to log in.

Question 53

What is the purpose of a password vault and how secure is it?

Answer 53

Stores passwords using AES-256 encryption. It is only as secure as the master key.

Question 54

What type of knowledge-based authentication would a bank normally use?

Answer 54

Dynamic KBA, which would ask you details about your account that are not previously stored questions.

Question 55

What is the difference between FAR and FRR?

Answer 55

FAR: False Acceptance Rate, allows unauthorized access.
FRR: False Rejection Rate, rejects authorized user access.

Question 56

What is the solution that helps protect privileged accounts?

Answer 56

Privileged Access Management stores the privileged account in a bastion domain to help protect them from attack.

Question 57

What is the danger to households with IoT devices?

Answer 57

There are vulnerable generic accounts controlling the devices.

Question 58

Why do cloud providers adopt a zero-trust model?

Answer 58

Some devices (like iPads) do not belong to a domain, so every connection should be considered unsafe.

Question 59

Which authentication model gives access to a computer system even though the wrong credentials are being used?

Answer 59

Biometric authentication allows unauthorized user access.