Security+ 501 Flashcards
Which of the following is the BEST reason for salting a password hash before it is stored in a database?
To prevent duplicate values from being stored
An actor downloads and runs a program against a corporate login page. The program imports a list of usernames and passwords, looking for a successful attempt. Which of the following terms BEST describes the actor in this situation?
Script kiddie
An organization wants to utilize a common, Internet-based third-party provider for authorization and authentication. The provider uses a technology based on OAuth 2.0 to provide required services. To which of the following technologies is the provider referring?
OpenID Connect
A security administrator wants to implement a logon script that will prevent MITM attacks on the local LAN. Which of the following commands should the security administrator implement within the script to accomplish this task?
arp - s 192.168.1.1 00-3a-d1-fa-b1-06
A penetration tester harvests potential usernames from a social networking site. The penetration tester then uses social engineering to attempt to obtain associated passwords to gain unauthorized access to shares on a network server. Which of the following methods is the penetration tester MOST likely using?
Active reconnaissance
Which of the following could occur when both strong and weak ciphers are configured on a VPN concentrator? (Select TWO)
An attacker could potentially perform a downgrade attack., The IPSec payload reverted to 16-bit sequence numbers.
Which of the following is the BEST choice for a security control that represents a preventive and corrective logical control at the same time?
Antivirus
A web developers improves client access to the company’s REST API. Authentication needs to be tokenized but not expose the client’s password. Which of the following methods would BEST meet the developer’s requirements?
SAML
A vulnerability scan is being conducted against a desktop system. The scan is looking for files, versions, and registry values known to be associated with system vulnerabilities. Which of the following BEST describes the type of scan being performed?
Credentialed
A security analyst is updating a BIA document. The security analyst notices the support vendor’s time to replace a server hard drive went from eight hours to two hours. Given these new metrics, which of the following can be concluded? (Select TWO)
The MTTR is faster., The RTO has decreased.
Which of the following could help detect trespassers in a secure facility? (Select TWO)
Motion-detection sensors
The IT department is deploying new computers. To ease the transition, users will be allowed to access their old and new systems. The help desk is receive reports that users are experiencing the following error when attempting to log in to their previous system:
Certificate issues
A third-party penetration testing company was able to successfully use an ARP cache poison technique to gain root access on a server. The tester successfully moved to another server that was not in the original network. Which of the following is the MOST likely method used to gain access to the other host?
Pivoting
Pivoting
Public key, Private key
The POODLE attack is a MITM exploit that affects:
SSLv3.0 with CBC mode cipher.
To determine the ALE of a particular risk, which of the following must be calculated? (Select TWO).
ARO, SLE
Which of the following are used to increase the computing time it takes to brute force a password using an offline attack? (Select TWO)
PBKDF2, bcrypt
Users in a corporation currently authenticate with a username and password. A security administrator wishes to implement two-factor authentication to improve security. Which of the following authentication methods should be deployed to achieve this goal?
Smart card
A security administrator needs to address the following audit recommendations for a public-facing SFTP server: Users should be restricted to upload and download files to their own home directories only. Users should not be allowed to use interactive shell login. Which of the following configuration parameters should be implemented? (Select TWO).
ChrootDirectory, PermitTTY
An organization recently moved its custom web applications to the cloud, and it is obtaining managed services of the back-end environment as part of its subscription. Which of the following types of services is this company now using?
CASB explanation: Security Broker (CASB) gives you both visibility into your entire cloud stack and the security automation tool your IT team needs.
Which of the following is commonly done as part of a vulnerability scan?
Identifying unpatched workstations
After a security incident, management is meeting with involved employees to document the incident and its aftermath. Which of the following BEST describes this phase of the incident response process?
Lessons learned
After an identified security breach, an analyst is tasked to initiate the IR process. Which of the following is the NEXT step the analyst should take?
Identification
A user needs to send sensitive information to a colleague using PKI. Which of the following concepts apply when a sender encrypts the message hash with the sender’s private key? (Select TWO)
Non-repudiation, Message integrity
A technician suspects that a system has been compromised. The technician reviews the following log entry:
Rootkit
As part of a new BYOD rollout, a security analyst has been asked to find a way to securely store company data on personal devices. Which of the following would BEST help to accomplish this?
Implement containerization of company data.
A web server, which is configured to use TLS with AES-GCM-256, SHA-384, and ECDSA, recently suffered an information loss breach. Which of the following is MOST likely the cause?
Poor implementation
An incident involving a workstation that is potentially infected with a virus has occurred. The workstation may have sent confidential data to an unknown internet server. Which of the following should a security analyst do FIRST?
Make a copy of everything in memory on the workstation.
Which of the following BEST describes an important security advantage yielded by implementing vendor diversity?
Resiliency
A dumpster diver recovers several hard drives from a company and is able to obtain confidential data from one of the hard drives. The company then discovers its information is posted online. Which of the following methods would have MOST likely prevented the data from being exposed?
Using magnetic fields to erase the data
A manager wants to distribute a report to several other managers with the company. Some of them reside in remote locations that are not connected to the domain but have a local server. Because there is sensitive data within the report and the size of the report is beyond the limit of the email attachment size, emailing the report is not an option. Which of the following protocols should be implemented to distribute the report securely? (Select THREE)
SSH, FTPS, HTTPS
A vice president at a manufacturing organization is concerned about desktops being connected to the network. Employees need to log onto the desktops’ local account to verify that a product is being created within specifications; otherwise, the desktops should be as isolated as possible. Which of the following is the BEST way to accomplish this?
Air gap the desktops.
An in-house penetration tester has been asked to evade a new DLP system. The tester plans to exfiltrate data through steganography. Discovery of which of the following would help catch the tester in the act?
Outgoing emails containing unusually large image files
A member of the admins group reports being unable to modify the “changes” file on a server. The permissions on the file are as follows: Permissions User Group File -rwxrw-r–+ Admins Admins changes Based on the output above, which of the following BEST explains why the user is unable to modify the “changes” file?
An FACL has been added to the permissions for the file.
A penetration tester is conducting an assessment on Comptia.org and runs the following command from a coffee shop while connected to the public Internet: c:\nslookup -querytype=MX comptia.org Server: Unknown Address: 198.51.100.45 comptia.org MX preference=10, mail exchanger = 92.68.102.33 comptia.org MX preference=20, mail exchanger = exchg1.comptia.org exchg1.comptia.org internet address = 192.168.102.67 Which of the following should the penetration tester conclude about the command output?
192.168.102.67 is a backup mail server that may be more vulnerable to attack.
A security analyst is inspecting the results of a recent internal vulnerability scan that was performed against intranet services. The scan reports include the following critical-rated vulnerability: Title: Remote Command Execution vulnerability in web server Rating: Critical (CVSS 10.0) Threat actor: any remote user of the web server Confidence: certain Recommendation: apply vendor patches Which of the following actions should the security analyst perform FIRST?
Apply organizational context to the risk rating.
Company A agrees to provide perimeter protection, power, and environmental support with measurable goals for Company B, but will not be responsible for user authentication or patching of operating systems within the perimeter. Which of the following is being described?
Service level agreement
A company is deploying smartphones for its mobile salesforce. These devices are for personal and business use but are owned by the company. Sales personnel will save new customer data via a custom application developed for the company. This application will integrate with the contact information stored in the smartphones and will populate new customer records onto it. The customer application’s data is encrypted at rest, and the application’s connection to the back office system is considered secure. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) has concerns that customer contact information may be accidentally leaked due to the limited security capabilities of the devices and the planned controls. Which of the following will be the MOST efficient security control to implement to lower this risk?
Restrict contact information storage data flow so it is only shared with the customer application.
The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is asking for ways to protect against zero-day exploits. The CISO is concerned that an unrecognized threat could compromise corporate data and result in regulatory fines as well as poor corporate publicity. The network is mostly flat, with split staff/guest wireless functionality. Which of the following equipment MUST be deployed to guard against unknown threats?
Behavior-based IPS with a communication link to a cloud-based vulnerability and threat feed
An organization has several production-critical SCADA supervisory systems that cannot follow the normal 30- day patching policy. Which of the following BEST maximizes the protection of these systems from malicious software?
Configure a firewall with deep packet inspection that restricts traffic to the systems.
An organization identifies a number of hosts making outbound connections to a known malicious IP over port TCP 80. The organization wants to identify the data being transmitted and prevent future connections to this IP. Which of the following should the organization do to achieve this outcome?
Use a protocol analyzer to reconstruct the data and blacklist the IP on the firewall.
Legal authorities notify a company that its network has been compromised for the second time in two years. The investigation shows the attackers were able to use the same vulnerability on different systems in both attacks. Which of the following would have allowed the security team to use historical information to protect against the second attack?
Lessons learned
A small company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has asked its Chief Security Officer (CSO) to improve the company’s security posture quickly with regard to targeted attacks. Which of the following should the CSO conduct FIRST?
Survey threat feeds from services inside the same industry
A company is evaluating cloud providers to reduce the cost of its internal IT operations. The company’s aging systems are unable to keep up with customer demand. Which of the following cloud models will the company MOST likely select?
IaaS
During a routine vulnerability assessment, the following command was successful: echo “vrfy ‘perl -e ‘print “hi” x 500 ‘ ‘ “ | nc www.company.com 25 Which of the following vulnerabilities is being exploited?
Buffer overflow directed at a specific host MTA
A forensic investigator has run into difficulty recovering usable files from a SAN drive. Which of the following SAN features might have caused the problem?
Deduplication
A company offers SaaS, maintaining all customers’ credentials and authenticating locally. Many large customers have requested the company offer some form of federation with their existing authentication infrastructures. Which of the following would allow customers to manage authentication and authorizations from within their existing organizations?
Implement SAML so the company’s services may accept assertions from the customers’ authentication servers.
A software development manager is taking over an existing software development project. The team currently suffers from poor communication due to a long delay between requirements documentation and feature delivery. This gap is resulting in an above average number of security-related bugs making it into production. Which of the following development methodologies is the team MOST likely using now?
Waterfall
Following the successful response to a data-leakage incident, the incident team lead facilitates an exercise that focuses on continuous improvement of the organization’s incident response capabilities. Which of the following activities has the incident team lead executed?
Lessons learned review
A security analyst is attempting to break into a client’s secure network. The analyst was not given prior information about the client, except for a block of public IP addresses that are currently in use. After network enumeration, the analyst’s NEXT step is to perform:
a gray-box penetration test.
A security architect has convened a meeting to discuss an organization’s key management policy. The organization has a reliable internal key management system, and some argue that it would be best to manage the cryptographic keys internally as opposed to using a solution from a third party. The company should use:
risk benefits analysis results to make a determination.
After a recent internal breach, a company decided to regenerate and reissue all certificates used in the transmission of confidential information. The company places the greatest importance on confidentiality and non-repudiation, and decided to generate dual key pairs for each client. Which of the following BEST describes how the company will use these certificates?
One key pair will be used for encryption and decryption. The other will be used to digitally sign the data.
A security manager is creating an account management policy for a global organization with sales personnel who must access corporate network resources while traveling all over the world. Which of the following practices is the security manager MOST likely to enforce with the policy? (Select TWO)
Password complexity, Group-based access control
A network administrator at a small office wants to simplify the configuration of mobile clients connecting to an encrypted wireless network. Which of the following should be implemented if the administrator does not want to provide the wireless password or certificate to the employees?
WPS
A security administrator learns that PII, which was gathered by the organization, has been found in an open forum. As a result, several C-level executives found their identities were compromised, and they were victims of a recent whaling attack. Which of the following would prevent these problems in the future? (Select TWO).
Implement an email DLP. Implement a spam filter.
A security engineer is configuring a wireless network with EAP-TLS. Which of the following activities is a requirement for this configuration?
Deploying certificates to endpoint devices
Ann is the IS manager for several new systems in which the classification of the systems’ data are being decided. She is trying to determine the sensitivity level of the data being processed. Which of the following people should she consult to determine the data classification?
Owner
Which of the following BEST describes a network-based attack that can allow an attacker to take full control of a vulnerable host?
Remote exploit
A systems administrator wants to generate a self-signed certificate for an internal website. Which of the following steps should the systems administrator complete prior to installing the certificate on the server?
Provide the private key to the internal CA.
A security analyst has received the following alert snippet from the HIDS appliance: PROTOCOL SIG SRC.PORT DST.PORT, TCP XMAS SCAN 192.168.1.1:1091 192.168.1.2:8891, TCP XMAS SCAN 192.168.1.1:1091 192.168.1.2:8891, TCP XMAS SCAN 192.168.1.1:1091 192.168.1.2:8891, TCP XMAS SCAN 192.168.1.1:649 192.168.1.2:9001 TCP XMAS SCAN 192.168.1.1:2264 192.168.1.2:6455, TCP XMAS SCAN 192.168.1.1:3464 192.168.1.2:8744, Given the above logs, which of the following is the cause of the attack?
FIN, URG, and PSH flags are set in the packet header.
Which of the following controls allows a security guard to perform a post-incident review?
Corrective
Attackers have been using revoked certificates for MITM attacks to steal credentials from employees of Company.com. Which of the following options should Company.com implement to mitigate these attacks?
OCSP stapling
After attempting to harden a web server, a security analyst needs to determine if an application remains vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. Which of the following would BEST assist the analyst in making this vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. Which of the following would BEST assist the analyst in making this determination?
Fuzzer
A company is allowing a BYOD policy for its staff. Which of the following is a best practice that can decrease the risk of users jailbreaking mobile devices?
Require applications to be digitally signed.
Which of the following describes the key difference between vishing and phishing attacks?
Vishing attacks are accomplished using telephony services.
Which of the following should a security analyst perform FIRST to determine the vulnerabilities of a legacy system?
Passive scan
Which of the following components of printers and MFDs are MOST likely to be used as vectors of compromise if they are improperly configured?
Embedded web server
A hacker has a packet capture that contains: ….Joe Smith………E289F21CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF267ED2.. …Jane.Doe………..AD1FAB10D33E4F57890DDEA5CF267ED2.. ….John.Key……….3374E9E7E33E4F57890DDEA5CF267ED2.. Which of the following tools will the hacker use against this type of capture?
Password cracker
A user downloads and installs an MP3 converter, and runs the application. Upon running the application, the antivirus detects a new port in a listening state. Which of the following has the user MOST likely executed?
RAT
An attacker exploited a vulnerability on a mail server using the code below. “+ “URL:” +”document.location) ; />
The attacker is replacing a document.
A security analyst is securing smartphones and laptops for a highly mobile workforce. Priorities include: Remote wipe capabilities, Geolocation services, Patch management and reporting, Mandatory screen locks, Ability to require passcodes and pins, Ability to require encryption, Which of the following would BEST meet these requirements?
Implementing MDM software
A technician receives a device with the following anomalies: Frequent pop-up ads, show response-time switching between active programs, Unresponsive peripherals. The technician reviews the following log file entries: File Name Source MD5 Target MD5 Status antivirus.exe F794F21CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF267ED2, F794F21CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF267ED2 Automatic, iexplore.exe 7FAAF21CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF29CCEA, AA87F21CD33E4F57890DDEAEE2197333 Automatic, service.exe 77FF390CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF28881F, 77FF390CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF28881F Manual, USB.exe E289F21CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF28EDC0, E289F21CD33E4F57890DDEA5CF28EDC0 Stopped, Based on the above output, which of the following should be reviewed?
The file integrity check
A systems administrator is attempting to recover from a catastrophic failure in the datacenter. To recover the domain controller, the systems administrator needs to provide the domain administrator credentials. Which of the following account types is the systems administrator using?
User account
An organization plans to implement multifactor authentication techniques within the enterprise network architecture. Each authentication factor is expected to be a unique control. Which of the following BEST describes the proper employment of multifactor authentication?
Proximity card, fingerprint scanner, PIN
Multiple organizations operating in the same vertical want to provide seamless wireless access for their employees as they visit the other organizations. Which of the following should be implemented if all the organizations use the native 802.1x client on their mobile devices?
RADIUS federation
Upon entering an incorrect password, the logon screen displays a message informing the user that the password does not match the username provided and is not the required length of 12 characters. Which of the following secure coding techniques should a security analyst address with the application developers to follow following secure coding techniques should a security analyst address with the application developers to follow security best practices?
Error handling
A security administrator is developing controls for creating audit trails and tracking if a PHI data breach is to occur. The administrator has been given the following requirements: *All access must be correlated to a user account. *All access must be correlated to a user account. *All user accounts must be assigned to a single individual. *User access to the PHI data must be recorded. *Anomalies in PHI data access must be reported. *Logs and records cannot be deleted or modified. Which of the following should the administrator implement to meet the above requirements? (Select THREE).
Eliminate shared accounts, Implement usage auditing and review, Copy logs in real time to a secured WORM drive
An administrator is replacing a wireless router. The configuration of the old wireless router was not documented before it stopped functioning. The equipment connecting to the wireless network uses older legacy equipment that was manufactured prior to the release of the 802.11i standard. Which of the following configuration options should the administrator select for the new wireless router?
WPA+TKIP
Which of the following threat actors is MOST likely to steal a company’s proprietary information to gain a market edge and reduce time to market?
Competitor
Which of the following BEST describes an important security advantage yielded by implementing vendor diversity?
Resiliency
Which of the following specifically describes the exploitation of an interactive process to access otherwise restricted areas of the OS?
Buffer overflow
Which of the following differentiates a collision attack from a rainbow table attack?
A rainbow table attack performs a hash lookup
A security analyst observes the following events in the logs of an employee workstation: 1/23 1:07:16 865 Access to C:\Users\user\temp\oasdfkh.hta has been restricted by your administrator by the default restriction policy level. 1/23 1:07:09 1034 The scan is completed. No detections were found. The security analyst reviews the file system and observes the following: C:\>dirC:\Users\user\temp1/23 1:07:02 oasdfkh.hta1/23 1:07:02 update.bat1/23 1:07:02 msg.txt Given the information provided, which of the following MOST likely occurred on the workstation?
Application whitelisting controls blocked an exploit payload from executing
A security technician has been receiving alerts from several servers that indicate load balancers have had a significant increase in traffic. The technician initiates a system scan. The scan results illustrate that the disk space on several servers has reached capacity. The scan also indicates that incoming internet traffic to the servers has increased. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of the decreased disk space?
Unauthorized software
A security administrator is diagnosing a server where the CPU utilization is at 100% for 24 hours. The main culprit of CPU utilization is the antivirus program. Which of the following issue could occur if left unresolved? (Select TWO)
DoS attack, Resource exhaustion
Which of the following is used to validate the integrity of data?
MD5
A user typically works remotely over the holidays using a web-based VPN to access corporate resources. The user reports getting untrusted host errors and being unable to connect. Which of the following is MOST likely the case?
The certificate has expired
When it comes to cloud computing, if one of the requirements for a project is to have the most control over the systems in the cloud, which of the following is a service model that would be BEST suited for this goal?
Infrastructure
A company was recently audited by a third party. The audit revealed the company’s network devices were transferring files in the clear. Which of the following protocols should the company use to transfer files?
SCP
A security analyst is acquiring data from a potential network incident. Which of the following evidence is the analyst MOST likely to obtain to determine the incident?
Traffic and logs
A cybersecurity analyst is looking into the payload of a random packet capture file that was selected for analysis. The analyst notices that an internal host had a socket established with another internal host over a non-standard port. Upon investigation, the origin host that initiated the socket shows this output: usera@host>history mkdir /local/usr/bin/somedirectory nc -1 192.168.5.1 -p 9856 ping -c 30 8.8.8.8 -a 600 rm /etc/dir2/somefile rm -rm /etc/dir2/ traceroute 8.8.8.8 pakill pid 9487 usera@host> Given the above output, which of the following commands would have established the questionable socket?
nc -1 192.168.5.1 -p 9856
A security administrator has written a script that will automatically upload binary and text-based configuration files onto a remote server using a scheduled task. The configuration files contain sensitive information. Which of the following should the administrator use? (Select TWO)
SCP, certificate-based authentication
A security analyst conducts a manual scan on a known hardened host that identifies many non-compliant items. Which of the following BEST describe why this has occurred? (Select TWO)
Non-applicable plug ins were selected in the scan policy, The output of the report contains false positives
Which of the following solutions should an administrator use to reduce the risk from an unknown vulnerability in a third-party software application?
Sandboxing
A network administrator needs to allocate a new network for the R&D group. The network must not be accessible from the Internet regardless of the network firewall or other external misconfigurations. Which of the following settings should the network administrator implement to accomplish this?
Configure the OS default TTL to 1
To help prevent one job role from having sufficient access to create, modify, and approve payroll data, which of the following practices should be employed?
Separation of duties
When attackers use a compromised host as a platform for launching attacks deeper into a company’s network, it is said that they are:
pivoting
The help desk received a call after hours from an employee who was attempting to log into the payroll server remotely. When the help desk returned the call the next morning, the employee was able to log into the server remotely without incident. However, the incident occurred again the next evening. Which of the following BEST describes the cause of the issue?
Time-of-day restrictions prevented the account from logging in
An analyst receives an alert from the SIEM showing an IP address that does not belong to the assigned network can be seen sending packets to the wrong gateway. Which of the following network devices is misconfigured and which of the following should be done to remediate the issue?
Router; place the correct subnet on the interface
A home invasion occurred recently in which an intruder compromised a home network and accessed a WiFIenabled baby monitor while the baby’s parents were sleeping. Which of the following BEST describes how the intruder accessed the monitor?
Default configuration
