Security Plus Practice Questions Flashcards
Which of the following would a security specialist be able to determine upon examination of a server’s certificate? A. CA public key B. Server private key C. CSR D. OID
D. OID (Object Identifier)
A security analyst is diagnosing an incident in which a system was compromised from an external IP address. The socket identified on the firewall was traced to 207.46.130.0:6666. Which of the following should the security analyst do to determine if the compromised system still has an active connection?
A. tracert
B. netstat
C. ping
D. nslookup
B. netstat
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?
A. Shibboleth B. RADIUS federation C. SAML D. OAuth E. OpenID connect
B. Radius Federation
Which of the following BEST describes an important security advantage yielded by implementing vendor diversity?
A. Sustainability
B. Homogeneity
C. Resiliency
D. Configurability
C. Resiliency
In a corporation where compute utilization spikes several times a year, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has requested a cost-effective architecture to handle the variable capacity demand. Which of the following characteristics does BEST describe what the CIO has requested?
A. Elasticity
B. Scalability
C. High availability
D. Redundancy
A. Elasticity
Elasticity is defined as “the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible”
A security engineer is configuring a system that requires the X.509 certificate information to be pasted into a form field in Base64 encoded format to import it into the system. Which of the following certificate formats should the engineer use to obtain the information in the required format? A. PFX B. PEM C. DER D. CER
B. PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail)
Which of the following attacks specifically impact data availability?
A. DDoS
B. Trojan
C. MITM
D. Rootkit
A. DDOS
A security analyst is hardening a server with the directory services role installed. The analyst must ensure LDAP traffic cannot be monitored or sniffed and maintains compatibility with LDAP clients. Which of the following should the analyst implement to
meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
A. Generate an X.509-compliant certificate that is signed by a trusted CA.
B. Install and configure an SSH tunnel on the LDAP server.
C. Ensure port 389 is open between the clients and the servers using the communication.
D. Ensure port 636 is open between the clients and the servers using the communication.
E. Remote the LDAP directory service role from the server
A. Generate an X.509-compliant certificate that is signed by a trusted CA.
D. Ensure port 636 is open between the clients and the servers using the communication.
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? A. Competitor B. Hacktivist C. Insider D. Organized crime
A. Competitor
A penetration tester is crawling a target website that is available to the public. Which of the following represents the actions the penetration tester is performing? A. URL hijacking B. Reconnaissance C. White box testing D. Escalation of privilege
B. Reconnaissance
Which of the following characteristics differentiate a rainbow table attack from a brute force attack? (Choose two.)
A. Rainbow table attacks greatly reduce compute cycles at attack time.
B. Rainbow tables must include pre-computed hashes.
C. Rainbow table attacks do not require access to hashed passwords.
D. Rainbow table attacks must be performed on the network.
E. Rainbow table attacks bypass maximum failed login restrictions.
B. Rainbow tables must include pre-computed hashes.
E. Rainbow table attacks bypass maximum failed login restrictions.
Which of the following best describes a routine in which semicolons, dashes, quotes, and commas are removed from a string?
A. Error handling to protect against program exploitation
B. Exception handling to protect against XSRF attacks.
C. Input validation to protect against SQL injection.
D. Padding to protect against string buffer overflows.
C. Input validation to protect against SQL injection.
A security analyst wishes to increase the security of an FTP server. Currently, all traffic to the FTP server is unencrypted. Users connecting to the FTP server use a variety of modern FTP client software. The security analyst wants to keep the same port and protocol, while also still allowing unencrypted connections. Which of the following would BEST accomplish these goals?
A. Require the SFTP protocol to connect to the file server.
B. Use implicit TLS on the FTP server.
C. Use explicit FTPS for connections.
D. Use SSH tunneling to encrypt the FTP traffic
C. Use explicit FTPS for connections
Which of the following explains why vendors publish MD5 values when they provide software patches for their customers to download over the Internet?
A. The recipient can verify the integrity of the software patch.
B. The recipient can verify the authenticity of the site used to download the patch.
C. The recipient can request future updates to the software using the published MD5 value.
D. The recipient can successfully activate the new software patch.
A. The recipient can verify the integrity of the software patch
Pubic class rainbow (
public static void main (String [] args) {
object blue = null;
blue.hashcode (); }
Which of the following vulnerabilities would occur if this is executed? A. Page exception B. Pointer deference C. NullPointerException D. Missing null check
D. Missing null check
Multiple employees receive an email with a malicious attachment that begins to encrypt their hard drives and mapped shares on their devices when it is opened. The network and security teams perform the following actions:
Shut down all network shares.
Run an email search identifying all employees who received the malicious message.
Reimage all devices belonging to users who opened the attachment. Next, the teams want to re-enable the network shares. Which of the following BEST describes this phase of the incident
response process?
A. Eradication
B. Containment
C. Recovery
D. Lessons learned
C. Recovery
An organization has determined it can tolerate a maximum of three hours of downtime. Which of the following has been specified? A. RTO B. RPO C. MTBF D. MTTR
A. RTO
Which of the following types of keys is found in a key escrow? A. Public B. Private C. Shared D. Session
B. Private
A security analyst is reviewing the following output from an IPS:
[] [1:2467] EXPLOIT IGMP IGAP message overflow attempt [] [Classification: Attempted Administrator Privilege Gain] [Priority: 1] 07/30-19:45:02.238185
250. 19.18.71 -> 250.19.18.22 IGMP TTL:255 TOS:: 0x0 ID: 9742 IpLen:20 DgmLen: 502 MF
Frag offset: 0x1FFF Frag Size: 0x01E2
[Xref => http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2004-0367
Given this output, which of the following can be concluded? (Choose two.)
A. The source IP of the attack is coming from 250.19.18.22.
B. The source IP of the attack is coming from 250.19.18.71.
C. The attacker sent a malformed IGAP packet, triggering the alert.
D. The attacker sent a malformed TCP packet, triggering the alert.
E. The TTL value is outside of the expected range, triggering the alert
B. The source IP of the attack is coming from 250.19.18.71.
C. The attacker sent a malformed IGAP packet, triggering the alert.
Despite having implemented password policies, users continue to set the same weak passwords and reuse old passwords. Which of the following technical controls would help prevent these policy violations? (Choose two.)
A. Password expiration B. Password length C. Password complexity D. Password history E. Password lockout
C. Password complexity
D. Password history
Which of the following types of cloud infrastructures would allow several organizations with similar structures and interests to realize the benefits of shared storage and resources? A. Private B. Hybrid C. Public D. Community
D. Community
A company is currently using the following configuration:
IAS server with certificate-based EAP-PEAP and MSCHAP Unencrypted authentication via PAP
A security administrator needs to configure a new wireless setup with the following configurations:
PAP authentication method PEAP and EAP provide two-factor authentication
Which of the following forms of authentication are being used? (Choose two.) A. PAP B. PEAP C. MSCHAP D. PEAP- MSCHAP E. EAP F. EAP-PEAP
A. PAP
C. MSCHAP
An auditor wants to test the security posture of an organization by running a tool that will display the following:
JIMS <00> UNIQUE Registered
WORKGROUP <00> GROUP Registered
JIMS <00> UNIQUE Registered
Which of the following commands should be used? A. nbtstat B. nc C. arp D. ipconfig
A. nbtstat
A company determines that it is prohibitively expensive to become compliant with new credit card regulations. Instead, the company decides to purchase insurance to cover the cost of any potential loss. Which of the following is the company doing?
A. Transferring the risk
B. Accepting the risk
C. Avoiding the risk
D. Migrating the risk
A. Transferring the risk
A company is using a mobile device deployment model in which employees use their personal devices for work at their own discretion. Some of the problems the company is encountering include the following:
There is no standardization.
Employees ask for reimbursement for their devices.
Employees do not replace their devices often enough to keep them running efficiently.
The company does not have enough control over the devices.
Which of the following is a deployment model that would help the company overcome these problems? A. BYOD B. VDI C. COPE D. CYOD
D. CYOD (Choose Your Own Device)
A botnet has hit a popular website with a massive number of GRE-encapsulated packets to perform a DDoS attack. News outlets discover a certain type of refrigerator was exploited and used to send outbound packets to the website that crashed. To which of the following categories does the refrigerator belong?
A. SoC (Security Operation Center)
B. ICS (International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium)
C. IoT (Internet of Things)
D. MFD (Multi-Function Devices)
C. IoT (Internet of Things)
Users report the following message appears when browsing to the company’s secure site: “This website cannot be trusted”. Which of the following actions should a security analyst take to resolve these messages? (Choose two.)
A. Verify the certificate has not expired on the server.
B. Ensure the certificate has a .pfx extension on the server.
C. Update the root certificate into the client computer certificate store.
D. Install the updated private key on the webserver.
E. Have users clear their browsing history and relaunch the session.
A. Verify the certificate has not expired on the server.
C. Update the root certificate into the client computer certificate store.
When trying to log onto a company’s new ticketing system, some employees receive the following message: “Access denied: too many concurrent sessions”. The ticketing system was recently installed on a small VM with only the recommended hardware specifications. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause for this error message?
A. Network resources have been exceeded.
B. The software is out of licenses.
C. The VM does not have enough processing power.
D. The firewall is misconfigured.
C. The VM does not have enough processing power.
Joe, an employee, wants to show his colleagues how much he knows about smartphones. Joe demonstrates a free movie application that he installed from a third party on his corporate smartphone. Joe’s colleagues were unable to find the application in the app stores. Which of the following allowed Joe to install the application? (Choose two.)
A. Near-field communication. B. Rooting/jailbreaking C. Ad-hoc connections D. Tethering E. Sideloading
B. Rooting/jailbreaking
E. Sideloading
Which of the following can be provided to an AAA system for the identification phase?
A. Username
B. Permissions
C. One-time token
D. Private certificate
A. Username
Which of the following implements two-factor authentication?
A. A phone system requiring a PIN to make a call
B. An ATM requiring a credit card and PIN
C. A computer requiring username and password
D. A datacenter mantrap requiring fingerprint and iris scan
B. An ATM requiring a credit card and PIN
Malicious traffic from an internal network has been detected on an unauthorized port on an application server. Which of the following network-based security controls should the engineer consider implementing?
A. ACLs
B. HIPS
C. NAT
D. MAC filtering
A. ACLs
A network administrator wants to implement a method of securing internal routing. Which of the following should the administrator implement?
A. DMZ
B. NAT
C. VPN
D. PAT
C. VPN
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 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? (Choose three.)
A. Eliminate shared accounts.
B. Create a standard naming convention for accounts.
C. Implement usage auditing and review.
D. Enable account lockout thresholds.
E. Copy logs in real time to a secured WORM drive.
F. Implement time-of-day restrictions.
G. Perform regular permission audits and reviews.
A. Eliminate shared accounts.
C. Implement usage auditing and review.
E. Copy logs in real time to a secured WORM drive.
Which of the following encryption methods does PKI typically use to securely protect keys?
A. Elliptic curve
B. Digital signatures
C. Asymmetric
D. Obfuscation
C. Asymmetric
An organization is using a tool to perform a source code review. Which of the following describes the case in which the tool incorrectly identifies the vulnerability?
A. False negative
B. True negative
C. False positive
D. True positive
C. False positive
An organization’s internal auditor discovers that large sums of money have recently been paid to a vendor that management does not recognize. The IT security department is asked to investigate the organizations the organization’s ERP system to determine how the accounts payable module has been used to make these vendor payments. The IT security department finds the following security configuration for the accounts payable module:
New Vendor Entry – Required Role: Accounts Payable Clerk New Vendor Approval – Required Role: Accounts Payable Clerk Vendor Payment Entry – Required Role: Accounts Payable Clerk Vendor Payment Approval – Required Role: Accounts Payable Manager Which of the following changes to the security configuration of the accounts payable module would BEST mitigate the risk?
New Vendor Entry – Required Role: Accounts Payable Clerk
New Vendor Approval – Required Role: Accounts Payable Manager
Vendor Payment Entry – Required Role: Accounts Payable Clerk
Vendor Payment Approval – Required Role: Accounts Payable Manager
A department head at a university resigned on the first day of the spring semester. It was subsequently determined that the department head deleted numerous files and directories from the server-based home directory while the campus was closed.
Which of the following policies or procedures could have prevented this from occurring?
A. Time-of-day restrictions
B. Permission auditing and review
C. Offboarding
D. Account expiration
C. Offboarding
A database backup schedule consists of weekly full backups performed on Saturday at 12:00 a.m. and daily differential backups also performed at 12:00 a.m. If the database is restored on Tuesday afternoon, which of the following is the number of individual backups that would need to be applied to complete the database recovery?
A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 4
B. 2
Which of the following security controls does an iris scanner provide?
A. Logical B. Administrative C. Corrective D. Physical E. Detective F. Deterrent
D. Physical
As part of new industry regulations, companies are required to utilize secure, standardized OS settings. A technical must ensure the OS settings are hardened. Which of the following is the BEST way to do this?
A. Use a vulnerability scanner.
B. Use a configuration compliance scanner.
C. Use a passive, in-line scanner.
D. Use a protocol analyzer.
B. Use a configuration compliance scanner.
A user has attempted to access data at a higher classification level than the user’s account is currently authorized to access. Which of the following access control models has been applied to this user’s account?
A. MAC
B. DAC
C. RBAC
D. ABAC
A. MAC (Media Access Control)
A security consultant discovers that an organization is using the PCL protocol to print documents, utilizing the default driver and print settings. Which of the following is the MOST likely risk in this situation?
A. An attacker can access and change the printer configuration.
B. SNMP data leaving the printer will not be properly encrypted.
C. An MITM attack can reveal sensitive information.
D. An attacker can easily inject malicious code into the printer firmware.
E. Attackers can use the PCL protocol to bypass the firewall of client computers.
B. SNMP data leaving the printer will not be properly encrypted.
An organization finds that most help desk calls are regarding account lockout due to a variety of applications running on different systems. Management is looking for a solution to reduce the number of account lockouts while improving security.
Which of the following is the BEST solution for this organization?
A. Create multiple application accounts for each user.
B. Provide secure tokens.
C. Implement SSO.
D. Utilize role-based access control.
C. Implement SSO (Single Sign On)
A user suspects someone has been accessing a home network without permission by spoofing the MAC address of an authorized system. While attempting to determine if an authorized user is logged into the home network, the user reviews the wireless router, which shows the following table for systems that are currently on the home network.
Hostname IPaddress MAC MAC Filter
DadPC 192.168.1.10 00:1D:1A:44:17:B5 On
MomPC 192.168.1.15 21:13:D6:C5:42:A2 Off
JuniorPC 192.168.1.16 42:A7:D1:25:11:52 On
Unknown 192.168.1.18 10:B3:22:1A:FF:21 Off
Which of the following should be the NEXT step to determine if there is an unauthorized user on the network?
A. Apply MAC filtering and see if the router drops any of the systems.
B. Physically check each of the authorized systems to determine if they are logged onto the network.
C. Deny the “unknown” host because the hostname is not known and MAC filtering is not applied to this host.
D. Conduct a ping sweep of each of the authorized systems and see if an echo response is received.
B. Physically check each of the authorized systems to determine if they are logged onto the network.
When performing data acquisition on a workstation, which of the following should be captured based on memory volatility? (Choose two.) A. USB-attached hard disk B. Swap/pagefile C. Mounted network storage D. ROM E. RAM
B. Swap/pagefile
E. RAM
Ann, a security administrator, has been instructed to perform fuzz-based testing on the company’s applications.
Which of the following best describes what she will do?
A. Enter random or invalid data into the application in an attempt to cause it to fault
B. Work with the developers to eliminate horizontal privilege escalation opportunities
C. Test the applications for the existence of built-in- back doors left by the developers
D. Hash the application to verify it won’t cause a false positive on the HIPS
A. Enter random or invalid data into the application in an attempt to cause it to fault
An attacker compromises a public CA and issues unauthorized X.509 certificates for Company.com. In the future, Company.com wants to mitigate the impact of similar incidents. Which of the following would assist Company.com with its goal? A. Certificate pinning B. Certificate stapling C. Certificate chaining D. Certificate with extended validation
A. Certificate pinning
A systems administrator is attempting to recover from a catastrophic failure in the data center. 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?
A. Shared account
B. Guest account
C. Service account
D. User account
C. Service account
A security administrator has found a hash in the environment known to belong to malware. The administrator then finds this file to be in the pre-update area of the OS, which indicates it was pushed from the central patch system.
File: winx86_adobe_flash_upgrade.exe
Hash: 99ac28bede43ab869b853ba62c4ea243
The administrator pulls a report from the patch management system with the following output:
Install Date: Package Name: Targets Hash:
10/10/2017 java_11.2x64.exe HQ’s PC
10/10/2017 winx86_adobe_flash_upgrade.exe HQ’s PC
Given the above outputs, which of the following MOST likely happened?
A. The file was corrupted after it left the patch system.
B. The file was infected when the patch manager downloaded it.
C. The file was not approved in the application whitelist system.
D. The file was embedded with a logic bomb to evade detection.
B. The file was infected when the patch manager downloaded it.
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 in the administrator does not want to provide the wireless password or he certificate to the employees?
A. WPS
B. 802.1x
C. WPA2-PSK
D. TKIP
A. WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup
When connected to a secure WAP, which of the following encryption technologies is MOST likely to be configured when connecting to WPA2-PSK?
A. DES
B. AES
C. MD5
D. WEP
B. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)
A company has a data classification system with definitions for “Private” and “Public”. The company’s security policy outlines how data should be protected based on type. The company recently added the data type “Proprietary”. Which of the following is the MOST likely reason the company added this data type?
A. Reduced cost
B. More searchable data
C. Better data classification
D. Expanded authority of the privacy officer
C. Better data classification
When configuring settings in a mandatory access control environment, which of the following specifies the subjects that can access specific data objects?
A. Owner
B. System
C. Administrator
D. User
C. Administrator
A high-security defense installation recently begun utilizing large guard dogs that bark very loudly and excitedly at the slightest provocation. Which of the following types of controls does this BEST describe?
A. Deterrent
B. Preventive
C. Detective
D. Compensating
A. Deterrent
A company’s user lockout policy is enabled after five unsuccessful login attempts. The help desk notices a user is repeatedly locked out over the course of a workweek. Upon contacting the user, the help desk discovers the user is on vacation and does not have network access. Which of the following types of attacks is MOST likely occurring? (Select two.)
A. Replay B. Rainbow tables C. Brute force D. Pass the hash E. Dictionary
C. Brute force
E. Dictionary
Ann. An employee in the payroll department, has contacted the help desk citing multiple issues with her device, including:
Slow performance
Word documents, PDFs, and images no longer opening
A pop-up
Ann states the issues began after she opened an invoice that a vendor emailed to her. Upon opening the invoice, she had to click several security warnings to view it in her word processor. Which of the following is the device MOST likely infected?
A. Spyware
B. Crypto-malware
C. Rootkit
D. Backdoor
D. Backdoor
A company is terminating an employee for misbehavior. Which of the following steps is MOST important in the process of disengagement from this employee?
A. Obtain a list of passwords used by the employee.
B. Generate a report on outstanding projects the employee handled.
C. Have the employee surrender company identification.
D. Have the employee sign an NDA before departing.
C. Have the employee surrender company identification.
A company is developing new secure technology and requires computers being used for development to be isolated. Which of the following should be implemented to provide the MOST secure environment?
A. A perimeter firewall and IDS B. An air-gapped computer network C. A honeypot residing in a DMZ D. An ad hoc network with NAT E. A bastion host
B. An air gapped computer network
Which of the following is an important step to take BEFORE moving any installation packages from a test environment to production?
A. Roll back changes in the test environment
B. Verify the hashes of files
C. Archive and compress the files
D. Update the secure baseline
B. Verify the hashes of files
A user clicked an email link that led to a website that infected the workstation with a virus. The virus encrypted all the network shares to which the user had access. The virus was not deleted or blocked by the company’s email filter, website filter, or antivirus. Which of the following describes what occurred?
A. The user’s account was over-privileged.
B. Improper error handling triggered a false negative in all three controls.
C. The email originated from a private email server with no malware protection.
D. The virus was a zero-day attack.
D. The virus was a zero-day attack.
An organization wishes to provide better security for its name resolution services. Which of the following technologies BEST supports the deployment of DNSSEC at the organization?
A. LDAP B. TPM C. TLS D. SSL E. PKI
C. TLS
A company hires a consulting firm to crawl its Active Directory network with a non-domain account looking for unpatched systems. Actively taking control of systems is out of scope, as is the creation of new administrator accounts. For which of the
following is the company hiring the consulting firm?
A. Vulnerability scanning
B. Penetration testing
C. Application fuzzing
D. User permission auditing
A. Vulnerability scanning
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?
A. WPA+CCMP
B. WPA2+CCMP
C. WPA+TKIP
D. WPA2+TKIP
C. WPA+TKIP
An application team is performing a load-balancing test for a critical application during off-hours and has requested access to the load balancer to review which servers are up without having the administrator on call. The security analyst is hesitant to give the application team full access due to other critical applications running on the load balancer. Which of the following is the BEST solution for a security analyst to process the request?
A. Give the application team administrator access during off-hours.
B. Disable other critical applications before granting the team access.
C. Give the application team read-only access.
D. Share the account with the application team.
C. Give the application team read-only access.
Which of the following cryptographic attacks would salting of passwords render ineffective?
A. Brute force
B. Dictionary
C. Rainbow tables
D. Birthday
C. Rainbow tables
A security analyst is hardening an authentication server. One of the primary requirements is to ensure there is mutual authentication and delegation. Given these requirements, which of the following technologies should the analyst recommend and configure?
A. LDAP services
B. Kerberos services
C. NTLM services
D. CHAP services
B. Kerberos services
Only Kerberos can do Mutual Auth and Delegation.
Two users need to send each other emails over unsecured channels. The system should support the principle of nonrepudiation. Which of the following should be used to sign the user’s certificates?
A. RA
B. CA
C. CRL
D. CSR
B. CA (Certificate Authority)
Which of the following attack types BEST describes a client-side attack that is used to manipulate an HTML iframe with JavaScript code via a web browser? A. Buffer overflow B. MITM C. XSS D. SQLi
C. XSS
An incident responder receives a call from a user who reports a computer is exhibiting symptoms consistent with a malware infection. Which of the following steps should the responder perform NEXT?
A. Capture and document necessary information to assist in the response.
B. Request the user capture and provide a screenshot or recording of the symptoms.
C. Use a remote desktop client to collect and analyze the malware in real time.
D. Ask the user to back up files for later recovery.
A. Capture and document necessary information to assist in the response
A senior incident response manager receives a call about some external IPs communicating with internal computers during off-hours. Which of the following types of malware is MOST likely causing this issue?
A. Botnet
B. Ransomware
C. Polymorphic malware
D. Armored virus
A. Botnet
Which of the following technologies employ the use of SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)? (Choose two.) A. Single sign-on B. Federation C. LDAP D. Secure token E. RADIUS
A. Single sign-on
B. Federation
Which of the following specifically describes the exploitation of an interactive process to access otherwise restricted areas of the OS?
A. Privilege escalation
B. Pivoting
C. Process affinity
D. Buffer overflow
A. Privilege escalation
After a user reports show computer performance, a systems administrator detects a suspicious file, which was installed as part of a freeware software package. The systems administrator reviews the output below:
C:\Windows\system32>netstat -nab
Active Connections
Proto Local Address | Foreign Address | State
TCP 0.0.0.0:135 0.0.0.0:0 Listening RpcSs svchos
TCP 0.0.0.0:445 0.0.0.0:0 Listening svchost.exe
TCP 192.168.1.10:50000 10.37.213.20 Established winserver.exe
UDP 192.168.1.10:1900 . SSDPSVR
Based on the above information, which of the following types of malware was installed on the user's computer? A. RAT B. Keylogger C. Spyware D. Worm E. Bot
A. RAT (Remote Access Trojan)
Which of the following network vulnerability scan indicators BEST validates a successful, active scan?
A. The scan job is scheduled to run during off-peak hours.
B. The scan output lists SQL injection attack vectors.
C. The scan data identifies the use of privileged-user credentials.
D. The scan results identify the hostname and IP address.
B. The scan output lists SQL injection attack vectors.
An analyst wants to implement a more secure wireless authentication for office access points. Which of the following technologies allows for encrypted authentication of wireless clients over TLS?
A. PEAP
B. EAP
C. WPA2
D. RADIUS
A. PEAP (Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol)
When systems, hardware, or software are not supported by the original vendor, it is a vulnerability known as:
A. system sprawl
B. end-of-life systems
C. resource exhaustion
D. a default configuration
B. end-of-life systems
A company has three divisions, each with its own networks and services. The company decides to make its secure web portal accessible to all employees utilizing their existing usernames and passwords. The security administrator has elected to use SAML to support authentication. In this scenario, which of the following will occur when users try to authenticate to the portal? (Choose two.)
A. The portal will function as a service provider and request an authentication assertion.
B. The portal will function as an identity provider and issue an authentication assertion.
C. The portal will request an authentication ticket from each network that is transitively trusted.
D. The back-end networks will function as an identity provider and issue an authentication assertion.
E. The back-end networks will request authentication tickets from the portal, which will act as the third-party service provider
authentication store.
F. The back-end networks will verify the assertion token issued by the portal functioning as the identity provider.
C. The portal will request an authentication ticket from each network that is transitively trusted.
D. The back-end networks will function as an identity provider and issue an authentication assertion.
Which of the following is the BEST explanation of why control diversity is important in a defense-in-depth architecture?
A. Social engineering is used to bypass technical controls, so having diversity in controls minimizes the risk of demographic exploitation
B. Hackers often impact the effectiveness of more than one control, so having multiple copies of individual controls provides redundancy
C. Technical exploits to defeat controls are released almost every day; control diversity provides overlapping protection.
D. Defense-in-depth relies on control diversity to provide multiple levels of network hierarchy that allow user domain segmentation
D. Defense-in-depth relies on control diversity to provide multiple levels of network hierarchy that allow user domain segmentation
A system administrator wants to provide a balance between the security of a wireless network and usability. The administrator is concerned with wireless encryption compatibility of older devices used by some employees. Which of the following would
provide strong security and backward compatibility when accessing the wireless network?
A. Open wireless network and SSL VPN
B. WPA using a preshared key
C. WPA2 using a RADIUS back-end for 802.1x authentication
D. WEP with a 40-bit key
B. WPA using a preshared key
An information security specialist is reviewing the following output from a Linux server.
user@server:~$crontab -1 5 **** /usr/local/bin/backup.sh user@server:~$ cat /usr/local/bin/backup.sh #!/bin/bash if ! grep - - quiet joeuser/etc/passwd then rm -rf/ fi
Based on the above information, which of the following types of malware was installed on the server?
A. Logic bomb B. Trojan C. Backdoor D. Ransomware E. Rootkit
A. Logic bomb
In terms of encrypting data, which of the following is BEST described as a way to safeguard password data by adding random data to it in storage?
A. Using salt
B. Using hash algorithms
C. Implementing elliptical curve
D. Implementing PKI
A. Using salt
A system administrator wants to provide for and enforce wireless access accountability during events where external speakers are invited to make presentations to a mixed audience of employees and non-employees. Which of the following should the administrator implement?
A. Shared accounts
B. Preshared passwords
C. Least privilege
D. Sponsored guest
D. Sponsored guest
Which of the following would MOST likely appear in an uncredentialed vulnerability scan?
A. Self-signed certificates
B. Missing patches
C. Auditing parameters
D. Inactive local accounts
D. Inactive local accounts
A security analyst observes the following events in the logs of an employee workstation:
1/23 | 1:07:16 | 865 | Access to C:\users\users\temp\oasdfkh.hta has been restricted by your administrator by the default restriction policy level
1/23 1:07:09 | 1034 | the scan completed. No detections were found
The security analyst reviews the file system and observes the following:
C:\>dir C:\Users\user\temp 1/23 1:07:02 oasdfkh.hta 1/23 1:07:02 update.bat 1/23 1:07:02 msg.txt
Given the information provided, which of the following MOST likely occurred on the workstation?
A. Application whitelisting controls blocked an exploit payload from executing.
B. Antivirus software found and quarantined three malware files.
C. Automatic updates were initiated but failed because they had not been approved.
D. The SIEM log agent was not tuned properly and reported a false positive.
A. Application whitelisting controls blocked an exploit payload from executing.
When identifying a company’s most valuable assets as part of a BIA (business impact analysis), which of the following should be the FIRST priority?
A. Life
B. Intellectual property
C. Sensitive data
D. Public reputation
A. Life
An organization needs to implement a large PKI. Network engineers are concerned that repeated transmission of the OCSP will impact network performance. Which of the following should the security analyst recommend in lieu of an OCSP?
A. CSR
B. CRL
C. CA
D. OID
B. CRL (Certificate Revocation List)
When considering a third-party cloud service provider, which of the following criteria would be the BEST to include in the security assessment process? (Choose two.)
A. Use of performance analytics B. Adherence to regulatory compliance C. Data retention policies D. Size of the corporation E. Breadth of applications support
B. Adherence to regulatory compliance
C. Data retention policies
Which of the following occurs when the security of a web application relies on JavaScript for input validation?
A. The integrity of the data is at risk.
B. The security of the application relies on antivirus.
C. A host-based firewall is required.
D. The application is vulnerable to race conditions.
A. The integrity of the data is at risk.
An analyst is reviewing a simple program for potential security vulnerabilities before being deployed to a Windows server. Given the following code:
void foo (char*bar)
{
char random_user_input[12];
strcp (random_user_imput, bar);
}
Which of the following vulnerabilities is present? A. Bad memory pointer B. Buffer overflow C. Integer overflow D. Backdoor
B. Buffer overflow
An organization’s file server has been virtualized to reduce costs. Which of the following types of backups would be MOST appropriate for the particular file server?
A. Snapshot
B. Full
C. Incremental
D. Differential
C. Incremental
A wireless network uses a RADIUS server that is connected to an authenticator, which in turn connects to a supplicant. Which of the following represents the authentication architecture in use?
A. Open systems authentication
B. Captive portal
C. RADIUS federation
D. 802.1x
D. 802.1x
An employer requires that employees use a key-generating app on their smartphones to log into corporate applications. In terms of authentication of an individual, this type of access policy is BEST defined as:
A. Something you have.
B. Something you know.
C. Something you do.
D. Something you are.
A. Something you have.
Adhering to a layered security approach, a controlled access facility employs security guards who verify the authorization of all personnel entering the facility. Which of the following terms BEST describes the security control being employed?
A. Administrative
B. Corrective
C. Deterrent
D. Compensating
A. Administrative
A security analyst is hardening a web server, which should allow a secure certificate-based session using the organization’s PKI infrastructure. The web server should also utilize the latest security techniques and standards. Given this set of requirements, which of the following techniques should the analyst implement to BEST meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
A. Install an X- 509-compliant certificate.
B. Implement a CRL using an authorized CA.
C. Enable and configure TLS on the server.
D. Install a certificate signed by a public CA.
E. Configure the web server to use a host header.
A. Install an X- 509-compliant certificate.
C. Enable and configure TLS on the server.
A manager wants to distribute a report to several other managers within 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? (Choose three.)
A. S/MIME B. SSH C. SNMPv3 D. FTPS E. SRTP F. HTTPS G. LDAPS
B. SSH
D. FTPS
F. HTTPS
An auditor is reviewing the following output from a password-cracking tool:
user1: Password1
user2: Recover!
user3: Alaskan10
user4: 4Private
user5: PerForMance2
Which of the following methods did the auditor MOST likely use? A. Hybrid B. Dictionary C. Brute force D. Rainbow table
A. Hybrid
Which of the following must be intact for evidence to be admissible in court?
A. Chain of custody
B. Order of volatility
C. Legal hold
D. Preservation
A. Chain of custody
A vulnerability scanner that uses its running service’s access level to better assess vulnerabilities across multiple assets within an organization is performing a:
A. Credentialed scan.
B. Non-intrusive scan.
C. Privilege escalation test.
D. Passive scan.
A. Credentialed scan.
Which of the following cryptography algorithms will produce a fixed-length, irreversible output?
A. AES
B. 3DES
C. RSA
D. MD5
D. MD5
A technician suspects that a system has been compromised. The technician reviews the following log entry:
WARNING- hash mismatch: C:\Window\SysWOW64\user32.dll
WARNING- hash mismatch: C:\Window\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll
Based solely on the above information, which of the following types of malware is MOST likely installed on the system?
A. Rootkit
B. Ransomware
C. Trojan
D. Backdoor
A. Rootkit
A new firewall has been places into service at an organization. However, a configuration has not been entered on the firewall. Employees on the network segment covered by the new firewall report they are unable to access the network. Which of the following steps should be completed to BEST resolve the issue?
A. The firewall should be configured to prevent user traffic form matching the implicit deny rule.
B. The firewall should be configured with access lists to allow inbound and outbound traffic.
C. The firewall should be configured with port security to allow traffic.
D. The firewall should be configured to include an explicit deny rule.
A. The firewall should be configured to prevent user traffic form matching the implicit deny rule
A security analyst is testing both Windows and Linux systems for unauthorized DNS zone transfers within a LAN on comptia.org from example.org. Which of the following commands should the security analyst use? (Choose two.)
A.nslookup
comptia.org
set type=ANY
ls-d example.org
B. nslookup
comptia.org
set type=MX
example.org
C. dig –axfr comptia.org @example.org
D. ipconfig /flushDNS
E. ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 up
dhclient renew
F. dig @example.org comptia.org
A.nslookup
comptia.org
set type=ANY
ls-d example.org
C. dig –axfr comptia.org @example.org
Which of the following are the MAIN reasons why a systems administrator would install security patches in a staging environment before the patches are applied to the production server? (Choose two.)
A. To prevent server availability issues
B. To verify the appropriate patch is being installed
C. To generate a new baseline hash after patching
D. To allow users to test functionality
E. To ensure users are trained on new functionality
A. To prevent server availability issues
D. To allow users to test functionality
A Chief Information Officer (CIO) drafts an agreement between the organization and its employees. The agreement outlines ramifications for releasing information without consent and/or approvals. Which of the following BEST describes this type of
agreement?
A. ISA
B. NDA
C. MOU
D. SLA
B. NDA
Which of the following would meet the requirements for multifactor authentication?
A. Username, PIN, and employee ID number
B. Fingerprint and password
C. Smart card and hardware token
D. Voice recognition and retina scan
B. Fingerprint and password
A manager suspects that an IT employee with elevated database access may be knowingly modifying financial transactions for the benefit of a competitor. Which of the following practices should the manager implement to validate the concern?
A. Separation of duties
B. Mandatory vacations
C. Background checks
D. Security awareness training
A. Separation of duties
A penetration tester finds that a company’s login credentials for the email client were being sent in cleartext. Which of the following should be done to provide encrypted logins to the email server?
A. Enable IPSec and configure SMTP.
B. Enable SSH and LDAP credentials.
C. Enable MIME services and POP3.
D. Enable an SSL certificate for IMAP services.
D. Enable an SSL certificate for IMAP services.
Before an infection was detected, several of the infected devices attempted to access a URL that was similar to the company name but with two letters transposed. Which of the following BEST describes the attack vector used to infect the devices?
A. Cross-site scripting
B. DNS poisoning
C. Typo squatting
D. URL hijacking
C. Typo squatting
A systems administrator is reviewing the following information from a compromised server:
process DEP Local Adress Remote Address
LSASS YES 0.0.0.0. 10.210.100.62
APACHE NO 0.0.0.0. 10.130.210.20
MySQL NO 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1
TFTP YES 191.168.1.10 10.34.221.96
Given the above information, which of the following processes was MOST likely exploited via a remote buffer overflow attack?
A. Apache
B. LSASS
C. MySQL
D. TFTP
A. Apache
Joe, a security administrator, needs to extend the organization’s remote access functionality to be used by staff while traveling. Joe needs to maintain separate access control functionalities for internal, external, and VOIP services. Which of the following represents the BEST access technology for Joe to use?
A. RADIUS
B. TACACS+
C. Diameter
D. Kerberos
B. TACACS+
The availability of a system has been labeled as the highest priority. Which of the following should be focused on the MOST to ensure the objective?
A. Authentication
B. HVAC
C. Full-disk encryption
D. File integrity checking
B. HVAC
As part of the SDLC, a third party is hired to perform a penetration test. The third-party will have access to the source code, integration tests, and network diagrams. Which of the following BEST describes the assessment being performed?
A. Black box
B. Regression
C. White box
D. Fuzzing
C. White box
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?
A. Removing the hard drive from its enclosure
B. Using software to repeatedly rewrite over the disk space
C. Using Blowfish encryption on the hard drives
D. Using magnetic fields to erase the data
D. Using magnetic fields to erase the data
Which of the following are methods to implement HA in a web application server environment? (Choose two.)
A. Load balancers B. Application layer firewalls C. Reverse proxies D. VPN concentrators E. Routers
A. Load balancers
B. Application layer firewalls
An application developer is designing an application involving secure transports from one service to another that will pass over port 80 for a request. Which of the following secure protocols is the developer MOST likely to use?
A. FTPS B. SFTP C. SSL D. LDAPS E. SSH
C. SSL
Which of the following precautions MINIMIZES the risk from network attacks directed at multifunction printers, as well as the impact on functionality at the same time?
A. Isolating the systems using VLANs
B. Installing a software-based IPS on all devices
C. Enabling full disk encryption
D. Implementing a unique user PIN access functions
A. Isolating the systems using VLANs
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?
A. Recovery B. Identification C. Preparation D. Documentation E. Escalation
B. Identification
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?
A. HTTPS
B. LDAPS
C. SCP
D. SNMPv3
C. SCP
During a monthly vulnerability scan, a server was flagged for being vulnerable to an Apache Struts exploit. Upon further investigation, the developer responsible for the server informs the security team that Apache Struts is not installed on the server. Which of the following BEST describes how the security team should reach to this incident?
A. The finding is a false positive and can be disregarded
B. The Struts module needs to be hardened on the server
C. The Apache software on the server needs to be patched and updated
D. The server has been compromised by malware and needs to be quarantined.
A. The finding is a false positive and can be disregarded
A systems administrator wants to protect data stored on mobile devices that are used to scan and record assets in a warehouse. The control must automatically destroy the secure container of mobile devices if they leave the warehouse. Which of the following should the administrator implement? (Choose two.)
A. Geofencing B. Remote wipe C. Near-field communication D. Push notification services E. Containerization
A. Geofencing
E. Containerization
A security analyst is performing a quantitative risk analysis. The risk analysis should show the potential monetary loss each time a threat or event occurs. Given this requirement, which of the following concepts would assist the analyst in determining
this value? (Choose two.)
A. ALE B. AV C. ARO D. EF E. ROI
B. AV
D. EF
Which of the following AES modes of operation provide authentication? (Choose two.)
A. CCM B. CBC C. GCM D. DSA E. CFB
A. CCM
C. GCM
An audit takes place after company-wide restricting, in which several employees changed roles. The following deficiencies are found during the audit regarding access to confidential data:
Employee | Job Function | Audit Finding
Ann|Sales Manager|Access to confidential Payroll info
Access to payroll processing prog
Access to marketing shared
Jeff|Marketing Directior|Access to human resource annual review
Access to shared human resouces mailbox
John|Sales Manager (Terminated)| active account
Access to human resourses annual review folder
Access to confidential payroll shares
Which of the following would be the BEST method to prevent similar audit findings in the future?
A. Implement separation of duties for the payroll department.
B. Implement a DLP solution on the payroll and human resources servers.
C. Implement rule-based access controls on the human resources server.
D. Implement regular permission auditing and reviews.
D. Implement regular permission auditing and reviews.
A security engineer is configuring a wireless network that must support mutual authentication of the wireless client and the authentication server before users provide credentials. The wireless network must also support authentication with usernames and passwords. Which of the following authentication protocols MUST the security engineer select?
A. EAP-FAST
B. EAP-TLS
C. PEAP
D. EAP
C. PEAP
A system’s administrator has finished configuring firewall ACL to allow access to a new web server.
PERMIT TCP from: ANY to: 192.168.1.10:80
PERMIT TCP from: ANY to: 192.168.1.10:443
DENY TCP from: ANY to : ANY
The security administrator confirms form the following packet capture that there is network traffic from the internet to the webserver:
TCP 10.23.243.2.2000->192.168.1.10:80 POST/default’s
TCP 172.16.4.100:1934->192.168.1.10.80 GET/session.aspx?user1_sessionid=a12ad8741d8f7ac723847cBaa8231a
The company’s internal auditor issues a security finding and requests that immediate action be taken. With which of the
following is the auditor MOST concerned?
A. Misconfigured firewall
B. Clear text credentials
C. Implicit deny
D. Default configuration
B. Clear text credentials
Which of the following vulnerability types would the type of hacker known as a script kiddie be MOST dangerous against?
A. Passwords written on the bottom of a keyboard
B. Unpatched exploitable Internet-facing services
C. Unencrypted backup tapes
D. Misplaced hardware token
B. Unpatched exploitable Internet-facing services
An in-house penetration tester is using a packet capture device to listen in on network communications. This is an example
of:
A. Passive reconnaissance
B. Persistence
C. Escalation of privileges
D. Exploiting the switch
A. Passive reconnaissance
A black hat hacker is enumerating a network and wants to remain covert during the process. The hacker initiates a vulnerability scan. Given the task at hand the requirement of being covert, which of the following statements BEST indicates that the vulnerability scan meets these requirements?
A. The vulnerability scanner is performing an authenticated scan.
B. The vulnerability scanner is performing local file integrity checks.
C. The vulnerability scanner is performing in network sniffer mode.
D. The vulnerability scanner is performing banner grabbing.
C. The vulnerability scanner is performing in network sniffer mode.
A development team has adopted a new approach to projects in which feedback is iterative and multiple iterations of deployments are provided within an application’s full life cycle. Which of the following software development methodologies is the development team using?
A. Waterfall
B. Agile
C. Rapid
D. Extreme
B. Agile
A Chief Executive Officer (CEO) suspects someone in the lab testing environment is stealing confidential information after working hours when no one else is around. Which of the following actions can help to prevent this specific threat?
A. Implement time-of-day restrictions.
B. Audit file access times.
C. Secretly install a hidden surveillance camera.
D. Require swipe-card access to enter the lab.
D. Require swipe-card access to enter the lab.
A company hires a third-party firm to conduct an assessment of vulnerabilities exposed to the Internet. The firm informs the company that an exploit exists for an FTP server that had a version installed from eight years ago. The company has decided to keep the system online anyway, as no upgrade exists from the vendor. Which of the following BEST describes the reason why the vulnerability exists?
A. Default configuration
B. End-of-life system
C. Weak cipher suite
D. Zero-day threats
B. End-of-life system
An organization uses SSO authentication for employee access to network resources. When an employee resigns, as per the organization’s security policy, the employee’s access to all network resources is terminated immediately. Two weeks later, the former employee sends an email to the help desk for a password reset to access payroll information from the human resources server. Which of the following represents the BEST course of action?
A. Approve the former employee’s request, as a password reset would give the former employee access to only the human
resources server.
B. Deny the former employee’s request since the password reset request came from an external email address.
C. Deny the former employee’s request, as a password reset would give the employee access to all network resources.
D. Approve the former employee’s request, as there would not be a security issue with the former employee gaining access
to network resources
C. Deny the former employee’s request, as a password reset would give the employee access to all network resources.
Joe, a user, wants to send Ann, another user, a confidential document electronically. Which of the following should Joe do to ensure the document is protected from eavesdropping?
A. Encrypt it with Joe’s private key
B. Encrypt it with Joe’s public key
C. Encrypt it with Ann’s private key
D. Encrypt it with Ann’s public key
D. Encrypt it with Ann’s public key
A director of IR is reviewing a report regarding several recent breaches. The director compiles the following statistic’s
- Initial IR engagement time frame
- Length of time before an executive management notice went out
- Average IR phase completion
The director wants to use the data to shorten the response time. Which of the following would accomplish this?
A. CSIRT
B. Containment phase
C. Escalation notifications
D. Tabletop exercise
D. Tabletop exercise
To reduce disk consumption, an organization’s legal department has recently approved a new policy setting the data retention period for sent email at six months. Which of the following is the BEST way to ensure this goal is met?
A. Create a daily encrypted backup of the relevant emails.
B. Configure the email server to delete the relevant emails.
C. Migrate the relevant emails into an “Archived” folder.
D. Implement automatic disk compression on email servers.
B. Configure the email server to delete the relevant emails.
A security administrator is configuring a new network segment, which contains devices that will be accessed by external users, such as web and FTP server. Which of the following represents the MOST secure way to configure the new network segment?
A. The segment should be placed on a separate VLAN, and the firewall rules should be configured to allow external traffic.
B. The segment should be placed in the existing internal VLAN to allow internal traffic only.
C. The segment should be placed on an intranet, and the firewall rules should be configured to allow external traffic.
D. The segment should be placed on an extranet, and the firewall rules should be configured to allow both internal and external traffic
D. The segment should be placed on an extranet, and the firewall rules should be configured to allow both internal and external traffic
Which of the following types of attacks precedes the installation of a rootkit on a server?
A. Pharming
B. DDoS
C. Privilege escalation
D. DoS
C. Privilege escalation
Which of the following cryptographic algorithms is irreversible? A. RC4 B. SHA-256 C. DES D. AES
B. SHA-256
A security analyst receives an alert from a WAF with the following payload: var data= “” ++ ”
Which of the following types of attacks is this? A. Cross-site request forgery B. Buffer overflow C. SQL injection D. JavaScript data insertion E. Firewall evasion script
D. JavaScript data insertion
A workstation puts out a network request to locate another system. Joe, a hacker on the network, responds before the real system does, and he tricks the workstation into communicating with him. Which of the following BEST describes what occurred?
A. The hacker used a race condition.
B. The hacker used a pass-the-hash attack.
C. The hacker-exploited improper key management.
D. The hacker exploited weak switch configuration.
D. The hacker exploited weak switch configuration
Audit logs from a small company’s vulnerability scanning software show the following findings:
Destinations scanned:
-Server001- Internal human resources payroll server
-Server101-Internet-facing web server
-Server201- SQL server for Server101
-Server301-Jumpbox used by systems administrators accessible from the internal network
Validated vulnerabilities found:
- Server001- Vulnerable to buffer overflow exploit that may allow attackers to install software
- Server101- Vulnerable to buffer overflow exploit that may allow attackers to install software
- Server201-OS updates not fully current
- Server301- Accessible from internal network without the use of jumpbox
- Server301-Vulnerable to highly publicized exploit that can elevate user privileges
Assuming external attackers who are gaining unauthorized information are of the highest concern, which of the following servers should be addressed FIRST?
A. Server001
B. Server101
C. Server201
D. Server301
B. Server101
A security analyst wants to harden the company’s VoIP PBX. The analyst is worried that credentials may be intercepted and compromised when IP phones authenticate with the BPX. Which of the following would best prevent this from occurring?
A. Implement SRTP between the phones and the PBX.
B. Place the phones and PBX in their own VLAN.
C. Restrict the phone connections to the PBX.
D. Require SIPS on connections to the PBX.
A. Implement SRTP between the phones and the PBX.
An organization is comparing and contrasting migration from its standard desktop configuration to the newest version of the platform. Before this can happen, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) voices the need to evaluate the functionality of
the newer desktop platform to ensure interoperability with existing software in use by the organization. In which of the following principles of architecture and design is the CISO engaging?
A. Dynamic analysis
B. Change management
C. Baselining
D. Waterfalling
B. Change management
A security administrator suspects a MITM attack aimed at impersonating the default gateway is underway. Which of the following tools should the administrator use to detect this attack? (Choose two.)
A. Ping B. Ipconfig C. Tracert D. Netstat E. Dig F. Nslookup
B. Ipconfig
C. Tracert
A user is presented with the following items during the new-hire onboarding process: -Laptop -Secure USB drive -Hardware OTP token -External high-capacity HDD -Password complexity policy -Acceptable use policy -HASP key -Cable lock Which of the following is one component of multifactor authentication?
A. Secure USB drive
B. Cable lock
C. Hardware OTP token
D. HASP key
C. Hardware OTP token
An organization requires users to provide their fingerprints to access an application. To improve security, the application developers intend to implement multifactor authentication. Which of the following should be implemented?
A. Use a camera for facial recognition
B. Have users sign their name naturally
C. Require a palm geometry scan
D. Implement iris recognition
B. Have users sign their name naturally
A network technician is setting up a segmented network that will utilize a separate ISP to provide wireless access to the public area for a company. Which of the following wireless security methods should the technician implement to provide basic
accountability for access to the public network?
A. Pre-shared key
B. Enterprise
C. Wi-Fi Protected setup
D. Captive portal
D. Captive Portal
After a routine audit, a company discovers that engineering documents have been leaving the network on a particular port. The company must allow outbound traffic on this port, as it has a legitimate business use. Blocking the port would cause an
outage. Which of the following technology controls should the company implement?
A. NAC
B. Web proxy
C. DLP
D. ACL
C. DLP (Data Loss Prevention)
A security analyst has received the following alert snippet from the HIDS appliance:
Proto | Sig | SRC.PORT | DST. Port
TCP| XMAS Scan | 192.168.1.1:1091 | 192.168.1.2.8891
TCP| XMAS Scan | 192.168.1.1:649 | 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 | 192.168.1.2.9744
Given the above logs, which of the following is the cause of the attack?
A. The TCP ports on destination are all open
B. FIN, URG, and PSH flags are set in the packet header
C. TCP MSS is configured improperly
D. There is improper Layer 2 segmentation
B. FIN, URG, and PSH flags are set in the packet header
A security analyst reviews the following output:
File name: somefile.pdf File MD5: E289F21...267ED2 File Size: 1.9 mb Created by: Jan Smith Deleted by: Jan Smith Date deleted: October 01, 2015 8:43:21 EST
The analyst loads the hash into the SIEM to discover if this hash is seen in other parts of the network. After inspecting a large number of files, the security analyst reports the following:
File Hash: E289F21…267ED2
Files found: somestuff.xls, somefile.pdf, nofile.doc
Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of the hash being found in other areas?
A. Jan Smith is an insider threat
B. There are MD5 hash collisions
C. The file is encrypted
D. Shadow copies are present
B. There are MD5 hash collisions
A company’s AUP requires:
Passwords must meet complexity requirements.
Passwords are changed at least once every six months.
Passwords must be at least eight characters long.
An auditor is reviewing the following report:
An Auditor is reviewing the following report:
USERNAME | LAST LOGIN | LAST CHANGED
Carol 2 hours 90 days
David 2 hours 30 days
Ann 1 hour 247 days
Joe .5 hour 7 days
Which of the following controls should the auditor recommend to enforce the AUP?
A. Account lockout thresholds
B. Account recovery
C. Password expiration
D. Prohibit password reuse
C. Password expiration
An organization’s primary data center is experiencing a two-day outage due to an HVAC malfunction. The node located in the data center has lost power and is no longer operational, impacting the ability of all users to connect to the alternate data center. Which of the following BIA concepts BEST represents the risk described in this scenario?
A. SPoF (Single Point of Failure)
B. RTO (Recover Time Objective)
C. MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
D. MTTR (Mean Time to Recovery)
A. SPoF (Single Point of Failure)
A security analyst notices anomalous activity coming from several workstations in the organizations. Upon identifying and containing the issue, which of the following should the security analyst do NEXT?
A. Document and lock the workstations in a secure area to establish chain of custody
B. Notify the IT department that the workstations are to be reimaged and the data restored for reuse
C. Notify the IT department that the workstations may be reconnected to the network for the users to continue working
D. Document findings and processes in the after-action and lessons learned report
D. Document findings and processes in the after-action and lessons learned report
An employee receives an email, which appears to be from the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), asking for a report of security credentials for all users. Which of the following types of attack is MOST likely occurring?
A. Policy violation
B. Social engineering
C. Whaling
D. Spear phishing
D. Spear phishing
An information security analyst needs to work with an employee who can answer questions about how data for a specific system is used in the business. The analyst should seek out an employee who has the role of:
A. steward
B. owner
C. privacy officer
D. systems administrator
B. owner
A group of non-profit agencies wants to implement a cloud service to share resources with each other and minimize costs. Which of the following cloud deployment models BEST describes this type of effort? A. Public B. Hybrid C. Community D. Private
C. Community
An administrator is configuring access to information located on a network file server named “Bowman”. The files are located in a folder named “BalkFiles”. The files are only for use by the “Matthews” division and should be read-only. The security policy requires permissions for shares to be managed at the file system layer and also requires those permissions to be set according to a least privilege model. Security policy for this data type also dictates that administrator-level accounts on the system have full access to the files.
The administrator configures the file share according to the following table:
SHARE PERMISSIONS:
1. Everyone Full Control
FILE SYSTEMS PERMISSIONS
- Bowman/Users Modify Inherited
- Domain\Matthews Read Not Inherited
- Bowman\System Full control Inherited
- Bowman\Admins Full control Not Inherited
Which of the following rows has been misconfigured? A. Row 1 B. Row 2 C. Row 3 D. Row 4 E. Row 5
D. Row 4
A copy of a highly confidential salary report was recently found on a printer in the IT department. The human resources department does not have this specific printer mapped to its devices, and it is suspected that an employee in the IT department browsed to the share where the report was located and printed it without authorization. Which of the following technical controls would be the BEST choice to immediately prevent this from happening again?
A. Implement a DLP solution and classify the report as confidential, restricting access only to human resources staff
B. Restrict access to the share where the report resides to only human resources employees and enable auditing
C. Have all members of the IT department review and sign the AUP and disciplinary policies
D. Place the human resources computers on a restricted VLAN and configure the ACL to prevent access from the IT department
B. Restrict access to the share where the report resides to only human resources employees and enable auditing
A company is developing a new system that will unlock a computer automatically when an authorized user sits in front of it, and then lock the computer when the user leaves. The user does not have to perform any action for this process to occur. Which of the following technologies provides this capability?
A. Facial recognition
B. Fingerprint scanner
C. Motion detector
D. Smart cards
A. Facial recognition
A security analyst accesses corporate web pages and inputs random data in the forms. The response received includes the type of database used and SQL commands that the database accepts. Which of the following should the security analyst use to prevent this vulnerability?
A. Application fuzzing
B. Error handling
C. Input validation
D. Pointer dereference
C. Input validation
Which of the following differentiates a collision attack from a rainbow table attack?
A. A rainbow table attack performs a hash lookup
B. A rainbow table attack uses the hash as a password
C. In a collision attack, the hash and the input data are equivalent
D. In a collision attack, the same input results in different hashes
A. A rainbow table attack performs a hash lookup
A help desk is troubleshooting user reports that the corporate website is presenting untrusted certificate errors to employees and customers when they visit the website. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this error, provided the certificate has not expired?
A. The certificate was self-signed, and the CA was not imported by employees or customers
B. The root CA has revoked the certificate of the intermediate CA
C. The valid period for the certificate has passed, and a new certificate has not been issued
D. The key escrow server has blocked the certificate from being validated
B. The root CA has revoked the certificate of the intermediate CA
A security analyst is investigating a suspected security breach and discovers the following in the logs of the potentially compromised server:
TIME SOURCE DEST ACCT Name Action
11: 01:31 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Failed
11: 01:32 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Failed
11: 01:33 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Failed
11: 01:34 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Failed
11: 01:35 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Failed
11: 01:36 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Failed
11: 01:37 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Failed
11: 01:38 18.12.98.145 10.15.21.100 Joe Successful
Which of the following would be the BEST method for preventing this type of suspected attack in the future?
A. Implement password expirations
B. Implement restrictions on shared credentials
C. Implement account lockout settings
D. Implement time-of-day restrictions on this server
C. Implement account lockout settings
A security administrator is trying to encrypt communication. For which of the following reasons should administrator take advantage of the Subject Alternative Name (SAM) attribute of a certificate?
A. It can protect multiple domains
B. It provides extended site validation
C. It does not require a trusted certificate authority
D. It protects unlimited subdomains
B. It provides extended site validation
After a merger between two companies a security analyst has been asked to ensure that the organization’s systems are secured against infiltration by any former employees that were terminated during the transition.
Which of the following actions are MOST appropriate to harden applications against infiltration by former employees? (Choose two.)
A. Monitor VPN client access
B. Reduce failed login out settings
C. Develop and implement updated access control policies
D. Review and address invalid login attempts
E. Increase password complexity requirements
F. Assess and eliminate inactive accounts
C. Develop and implement updated access control policies
F. Assess and eliminate inactive accounts
A new mobile application is being developed in-house. Security reviews did not pick up any major flaws, however, vulnerability scanning results show fundamental issues at the very end of the project cycle.
Which of the following security activities should also have been performed to discover vulnerabilities earlier in the lifecycle?
A. Architecture review
B. Risk assessment
C. Protocol analysis
D. Code review
D. Code review
A security administrator is creating a subnet on one of the corporate firewall interfaces to use as a DMZ which is expected to accommodate at most 14 physical hosts.
Which of the following subnets would BEST meet the requirements?
A. 192.168.0.16 255.25.255.248
B. 192.168.0.16/28
C. 192.168.1.50 255.255.25.240
D. 192.168.2.32/27
B. 192.168.0.16/28
A company has a security policy that specifies all endpoint computing devices should be assigned a unique identifier that can be tracked via an inventory management system. Recent changes to airline security regulations have caused many executives
in the company to travel with mini tablet devices instead of laptops. These tablet devices are difficult to tag and track. An RDP application is used from the tablet to connect into the company network.
Which of the following should be implemented in order to meet the security policy requirements?
A. Virtual desktop infrastructure (IDI) B. WS-security and geo-fencing C. A hardware security module (HSM) D. RFID tagging system E. MDM software F. Security Requirements Traceability Matrix (SRTM)
E. MDM software
The security administrator receives an email on a non-company account from a coworker stating that some reports are not exporting correctly. Attached to the email was an example report file with several customers’ names and credit card numbers
with the PIN.
Which of the following is the BEST technical controls that will help mitigate this risk of disclosing sensitive data?
A. Configure the mail server to require TLS connections for every email to ensure all transport data is encrypted
B. Create a user training program to identify the correct use of email and perform regular audits to ensure compliance
C. Implement a DLP solution on the email gateway to scan email and remove sensitive data or files
D. Classify all data according to its sensitivity and inform the users of data that is prohibited to share
C. Implement a DLP solution on the email gateway to scan email and remove sensitive data or files
A security administrator has been assigned to review the security posture of the standard corporate system image for virtual machines. The security administrator conducts a thorough review of the system logs, installation procedures, and network configuration of the VM image. Upon reviewing the access logs and user accounts, the security administrator determines that several accounts will not be used in production.
Which of the following would correct the deficiencies?
A. Mandatory access controls
B. Disable remote login
C. Host hardening
D. Disabling services
C. Host hardening
Although a web-enabled application appears to only allow letters in the comment field of a web form, a malicious user was able to carry a SQL injection attack by sending special characters through the web comment field. Which of the following has the application programmer failed to implement?
A. Revision control system
B. Client side exception handling
C. Server side validation
D. Server hardening
C. Server side validation
An attacker discovers a new vulnerability in an enterprise application. The attacker takes advantage of the vulnerability by developing new malware. After installing the malware, the attacker is provided with access to the infected machine. Which of the following is being described?
A. Zero-day exploit
B. Remote code execution
C. Session hijacking
D. Command injection
A. Zero-day exploit
A security administrator returning from a short vacation receives an account lock-out message when attempting to log into the computer. After getting the account unlocked the security administrator immediately notices a large amount of emails alerts
pertaining to several different user accounts being locked out during the past three days. The security administrator uses system logs to determine that the lock-outs were due to a brute force attack on all accounts that has been previously logged into that machine.
Which of the following can be implemented to reduce the likelihood of this attack going undetected?
A. Password complexity rules
B. Continuous monitoring
C. User access reviews
D. Account lockout policies
B. Continuous monitoring
A bank requires tellers to get manager approval when a customer wants to open a new account. A recent audit shows that there have been four cases in the previous year where tellers opened accounts without management approval. The bank president thought separation of duties would prevent this from happening.
In order to implement a true separation of duties approach the bank could:
A. Require the use of two different passwords held by two different individuals to open an account
B. Administer account creation on a role based access control approach
C. Require all new accounts to be handled by someone else other than a teller since they have different duties
D. Administer account creation on a rule based access control approach
C. Require all new accounts to be handled by someone else other than a teller since they have different duties
A security administrator has been tasked with improving the overall security posture related to desktop machines on the network. An auditor has recently that several machines with confidential customer information displayed on the screens are left
unattended during the course of the day. Which of the following could the security administrator implement to reduce the risk associated with the finding?
A. Implement a clean desk policy
B. Security training to prevent shoulder surfing
C. Enable group policy based screensaver timeouts
D. Install privacy screens on monitors
C. Enable group policy based screensaver timeouts
Company policy requires the use of passphrases instead of passwords. Which of the following technical controls MUST be in place in order to promote the use of passphrases?
A. Reuse
B. Length
C. History
D. Complexity
B. Lenth
During a routine audit, it is discovered that someone has been using a stale administrator account to log into a seldom-used server. The person has been using the server to view inappropriate websites that are prohibited to end-users. Which of the following could best prevent this from occurring again?
A. Credential management
B. Group policy management
C. Acceptable use policy
D. Account expiration policy
D. Account expiration policy
Which of the following should identify critical systems and components?
A. MOU (Memorandum of Understanding)
B. BPA (Business Process Automation)
C. ITCP (Information Technology Contingency Plan)
D. BCP (Business continuity planning)
BCP (Business continuity planning)
Which of the following works by implanting software on systems but delays execution until a specific set of conditions is met?
A. Logic bomb
B. Trojan
C. Scareware
D. Ransomware
A. Logic bomb
A web application is configured to target browsers and allow access to bank accounts to siphon money to a foreign account. This is an example of which of the following attacks?
A. SQL injection
B. Header manipulation
C. Cross-site scripting
D. Flash cookie exploitation
C. Cross-site scripting
Technicians working with servers hosted at the company’s data center are increasingly complaining of electric shocks when touching metal items which have been linked to hard drive failures. Which of the following should be implemented to correct this issue?
A. Decrease the room temperature
B. Increase humidity in the room
C. Utilize better hot/cold aisle configurations
D. Implement EMI shielding
B. Increase humidity in the room
A portable data storage device has been determined to have malicious firmware. Which of the following is the BEST course of action to ensure data confidentiality?
A. Format the device
B. Re-image the device
C. Perform virus scan in the device
D. Physically destroy the device
C. Perform virus scan in the device
A security administrator must implement a system to ensure that invalid certificates are not used by a custom-developed application. The system must be able to check the validity of certificates even when internet access is unavailable. Which of the following MUST be implemented to support this requirement?
A. CSR
B. OCSP
C. CRL
D. SSH
C. CRL
A technician has installed new vulnerability scanner software on a server that is joined to the company domain. The vulnerability scanner is able to provide visibility over the patch posture of all company’s clients. Which of the following is being used?
A. Gray box vulnerability testing
B. Passive scan
C. Credentialed scan
D. Bypassing security controls
C. Credentialed scan
The Chief Security Officer (CISO) at a multinational banking corporation is reviewing a plan to upgrade the entire corporate IT infrastructure. The architecture consists of a centralized cloud environment hosting the majority of data, small server clusters at each corporate location to handle the majority of customer transaction processing, ATMs, and a new mobile banking application accessible from smartphones, tablets, and the Internet via HTTP. The corporation does business having varying data retention and privacy laws.
Which of the following technical modifications to the architecture and corresponding security controls should be implemented to provide the MOST complete protection of data?
A. Revoke exiting root certificates, re-issue new customer certificates, and ensure all transactions are digitally signed to minimize fraud, implement encryption for data in-transit between data centers
B. Ensure all data is encryption according to the most stringent regulatory guidance applicable, implement encryption for data in-transit between data centers, increase data availability by replicating all data, transaction data, logs between each corporate location
C. Store customer data based on national borders, ensure end-to end encryption between ATMs, end users, and servers, test redundancy and COOP plans to ensure data is not inadvertently shifted from one legal jurisdiction to another with more stringent regulations
D. Install redundant servers to handle corporate customer processing, encrypt all customer data to ease the transfer from one
country to another, implement end-to-end encryption between mobile applications and the cloud.
C. Store customer data based on national borders, ensure end-to end encryption between ATMs, end users, and servers, test redundancy and COOP plans to ensure data is not inadvertently shifted from one legal jurisdiction to another with more stringent regulations
While reviewing the monthly internet usage it is noted that there is a large spike in traffic classified as “unknown” and does not appear to be within the bounds of the organization’s Acceptable Use Policy.
Which of the following tool or technology would work BEST for obtaining more information on this traffic?
A. Firewall logs
B. IDS logs
C. Increased spam filtering
D. Protocol analyzer
B. IDS (Intrusion Detection System) Logs
A network administrator wants to ensure that users do not connect any unauthorized devices to the company network. Each desk needs to connect a VoIP phone and computer.
Which of the following is the BEST way to accomplish this?
A. Enforce authentication for network devices
B. Configure the phones on one VLAN, and computers on another
C. Enable and configure port channels
D. Make users sign an Acceptable use Agreement
A. Enforce authentication for network devices
An administrator has concerns regarding the traveling sales team who works primarily from smart phones.
Given the sensitive nature of their work, which of the following would BEST prevent access to the data in case of loss or theft?
A. Enable screensaver locks when the phones are not in use to prevent unauthorized access
B. Configure the smart phones so that the stored data can be destroyed from a centralized location
C. Configure the smart phones so that all data is saved to removable media and kept separate from the device
D. Enable GPS tracking on all smart phones so that they can be quickly located and recovered
B. Configure the smart phones so that the stored data can be destroyed from a centralized location
A user of the wireless network is unable to gain access to the network. The symptoms are:
- ) Unable to connect to both internal and Internet resources
- ) The wireless icon shows connectivity but has no network access
The wireless network is WPA2 Enterprise and users must be a member of the wireless security group to authenticate.
Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of the connectivity issues?
A. The wireless signal is not strong enough
B. A remote DDoS attack against the RADIUS server is taking place
C. The user’s laptop only supports WPA and WEP
D. The DHCP scope is full
E. The dynamic encryption key did not update while the user was offline
C. The user’s laptop only supports WPA and WEP
A chief Financial Officer (CFO) has asked the Chief Information Officer (CISO) to provide responses to a recent audit report detailing deficiencies in the organization’s security controls. The CFO would like to know ways in which the organization can
improve its authorization controls.
Given the request by the CFO, which of the following controls should the CISO focus on in the report? (Choose three)
A. Password complexity policies B. Hardware tokens C. Biometric systems D. Role-based permissions E. One time passwords F. Separation of duties G. Multifactor authentication H. Single sign-on I. Lease privilege
D. Role-based permissions
F. Separation of duties
I. Lease privilege
A mobile device user is concerned about geographic positioning information being included in messages sent between users on a popular social network platform. The user turns off the functionality in the application but wants to ensure the application
cannot re-enable the setting without the knowledge of the user.
Which of the following mobile device capabilities should the user disable to achieve the stated goal?
A. Device access control
B. Location based services
C. Application control
D. GEO-Tagging
D. GEO-Tagging
A member of a digital forensics team, Joe arrives at a crime scene and is preparing to collect system data. Before powering the system off, Joe knows that he must collect the most volatile date first. Which of the following is the correct order in which Joe should collect the data?
A. CPU cache, paging/swap files, RAM, remote logging data
B. RAM, CPU cache. Remote logging data, paging/swap files
C. Paging/swap files, CPU cache, RAM, remote logging data
D. CPU cache, RAM, paging/swap files, remote logging data
D. CPU cache, RAM, paging/swap files, remote logging data
An organization has hired a penetration tester to test the security of its ten web servers. The penetration tester is able to gain root/administrative access in several servers by exploiting vulnerabilities associated with the implementation of SMTP, POP, DNS, FTP, Telnet, and IMAP.
Which of the following recommendations should the penetration tester provide to the organization to better protect their web servers in the future?
A. Use a honeypot
B. Disable unnecessary services
C. Implement transport layer security
D. Increase application event logging
B. Disable unnecessary services
A security engineer is faced with competing requirements from the networking group and database administrators. The database administrators would like ten application servers on the same subnet for ease of administration, whereas the networking group would like to segment all applications from one another.
Which of the following should the security administrator do to rectify this issue?
A. Recommend performing a security assessment on each application, and only segment the applications with the most
vulnerability
B. Recommend classifying each application into like security groups and segmenting the groups from one another
C. Recommend segmenting each application, as it is the most secure approach
D. Recommend that only applications with minimal security features should be segmented to protect them
B. Recommend classifying each application into like security groups and segmenting the groups from one another
A security analyst has been asked to perform a review of an organization’s software development lifecycle. The analyst reports that the lifecycle does not contain a phase in which team members evaluate and provide critical feedback of another developer’s code. Which of the following assessment techniques is BEST described in the analyst’s report?
A. Architecture evaluation
B. Baseline reporting
C. Whitebox testing
D. Peer review
D. Peer review
An attacker wearing a building maintenance uniform approached a company’s receptionist asking for access to a secure area. The receptionist asks for identification, a building access badge and checks the company’s list approved maintenance personnel prior to granting physical access to the secure are. The controls used by the receptionist are in place to prevent which of the following types of attacks?
A. Tailgating
B. Shoulder surfing
C. Impersonation
D. Hoax
C. Impersonation
A security administrator is tasked with conducting an assessment made to establish the baseline security posture of the corporate IT infrastructure. The assessment must report actual flaws and weaknesses in the infrastructure. Due to the expense of hiring outside consultants, the testing must be performed using in-house or cheaply available resources. There
cannot be a possibility of any requirement being damaged in the test.
Which of the following has the administrator been tasked to perform?
A. Risk transference
B. Penetration test
C. Threat assessment
D. Vulnerability assessment
D. Vulnerability assessment
A network administrator is attempting to troubleshoot an issue regarding certificates on a secure website. During the troubleshooting process, the network administrator notices that the web gateway proxy on the local network has signed all of the certificates on the local machine.
Which of the following describes the type of attack the proxy has been legitimately programmed to perform?
A. Transitive access
B. Spoofing
C. Man-in-the-middle
D. Replay
C. Man-in-the-middle
Which of the following use the SSH protocol? A. Stelnet B. SCP C. SNMP D. FTPS E. SSL F. SFTP
B. SCP
F. SFTP
Which of the following is the GREATEST risk to a company by allowing employees to physically bring their personal smartphones to work?
A. Taking pictures of proprietary information and equipment in restricted areas.
B. Installing soft token software to connect to the company’s wireless network.
C. Company cannot automate patch management on personally-owned devices.
D. Increases the attack surface by having more target devices on the company’s campus
A. Taking pictures of proprietary information and equipment in restricted areas.
Which of the following is the summary of loss for a given year?
A. MTBF
B. ALE
C. SLA
D. ARO
B. ALE (Annual Loss Expecantcy)
A Security Officer on a military base needs to encrypt several smart phones that will be going into the field.
Which of the following encryption solutions should be deployed in this situation?
A. Elliptic curve
B. One-time pad
C. 3DES
D. AES-256
D. AES-256
An organization relies heavily on an application that has a high frequency of security updates. At present, the security team only updates the application on the first Monday of each month, even though the security updates are released as often as twice a week.
Which of the following would be the BEST method of updating this application?
A. Configure testing and automate patch management for the application.
B. Configure security control testing for the application.
C. Manually apply updates for the application when they are released.
D. Configure a sandbox for testing patches before the scheduled monthly update.
A. Configure testing and automate patch management for the application.
A technician must configure a firewall to block external DNS traffic from entering a network.
Which of the following ports should they block on the firewall?
A. 53
B. 110
C. 143
D. 443
A. 53
A software development company needs to share information between two remote servers, using encryption to protect it. A programmer suggests developing a new encryption protocol, arguing that using an unknown protocol with secure, existing
cryptographic algorithm libraries will provide strong encryption without being susceptible to attacks on other known protocols. Which of the following summarizes the BEST response to the programmer’s proposal?
A. The newly developed protocol will only be as secure as the underlying cryptographic algorithms used.
B. New protocols often introduce unexpected vulnerabilities, even when developed with otherwise secure and tested algorithm libraries.
C. A programmer should have specialized training in protocol development before attempting to design a new encryption
protocol.
D. The obscurity value of unproven protocols against attacks often outweighs the potential for introducing new vulnerabilities.
B. New protocols often introduce unexpected vulnerabilities, even when developed with otherwise secure and tested algorithm libraries.
A security technician would like to obscure sensitive data within a file so that it can be transferred without causing suspicion. Which of the following technologies would BEST be suited to accomplish this?
A. Transport Encryption
B. Stream Encryption
C. Digital Signature
D. Steganography
D. Steganography
A supervisor in your organization was demoted on Friday afternoon. The supervisor had the ability to modify the contents of a confidential database, as well as other managerial permissions. On Monday morning, the database administrator reported that log files indicated that several records were missing from the database. Which of the following risk mitigation strategies should have been implemented when the supervisor was demoted?
A. Incident management
B. Routine auditing
C. IT governance
D. Monthly user rights reviews
B. Routine auditing
Which of the following attack types is being carried out where a target is being sent unsolicited messages via Bluetooth?
A. War chalking
B. Bluejacking
C. Bluesnarfing
D. Rogue tethering
B. Bluejacking
Joe is exchanging encrypted emails with another party. Joe encrypts the initial email with a key. When Joe receives a response, he is unable to decrypt the response with the same key he used initially.
Which of the following would explain the situation?
A. An ephemeral key was used for one of the messages
B. A stream cipher was used for the initial email; a block cipher was used for the reply
C. Out-of-band key exchange has taken place
D. Asymmetric encryption is being used
D. Asymmetric encryption is being used
Recently several employees were victims of a phishing email that appeared to originate from the company president. The email claimed the employees would be disciplined if they did not click on a malicious link in the message.
Which of the following principles of social engineering made this attack successful?
A. Authority
B. Spamming
C. Social proof
D. Scarcity
A. Authority
Which of the following is the LEAST secure hashing algorithm?
A. SHA1
B. RIPEMD
C. MD5
D. DES
C. MD5
An employee uses RDP to connect back to the office network.If RDP is misconfigured, which of the following security exposures would this lead to?
A. A virus on the administrator’s desktop would be able to sniff the administrator’s username and password.
B. Result in an attacker being able to phish the employee’s username and password.
C. A social engineering attack could occur, resulting in the employee’s password being extracted.
D. A man-in-the-middle attack could occur, resulting in the employee’s username and password being captured.
D. A man in the middle attack could occur, resulting in the employee’s username and password being captured.
Joe, the security administrator, sees this in a vulnerability scan report:
“The server 10.1.2.232 is running Apache 2.2.20 which may be vulnerable to a mod_cgi exploit.”
Joe verifies that the mod_cgi module is not enabled on 10.1.2.232. This message is an example of:
A. a threat.
B. a risk.
C. a false negative.
D. a false positive.
D. a false positive.
An auditor has identified an access control system that can incorrectly accept an access attempt from an unauthorized user. Which of the following authentication systems has the auditor reviewed?
A. Password-based
B. Biometric-based
C. Location-based
D. Certificate-based
B. Biometric-based
What ports belong to the following protocols?
- FTP
- Telnet
- SMTP
- SNMP
- SCP
- TFTP
- 21
- 23
- 25
- 161
- 22
- 69
The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of a company, Ann, is putting together a hardware budget for the next 10 years. She is asking for the average lifespan of each hardware device so that she is able to calculate when she will have to replace each device. Which of the following categories BEST describes what she is looking for?
A. ALE
B. MTTR
C. MTBF
D. MTTF
D. MTTF (Mean Time to Failure)
A software developer wants to ensure that the application is verifying that a key is valid before establishing SSL connections with random remote hosts on the Internet.
Which of the following should be used in the code? (Choose two.)
A. Escrowed keys B. SSL symmetric encryption key C. Software code private key D. Remote server public key E. OCSP
C. Software code private key
E. OCSP
A security guard has informed the Chief Information Security Officer that a person with a tablet has been walking around the building. The guard also noticed strange white markings in different areas of the parking lot. The person is attempting which of the following types of attacks?
A. Jamming
B. War chalking
C. Packet sniffing
D. Near field communication
B. War chalking
A system administrator is configuring a site-to-site VPN tunnel. Which of the following should be configured on the VPN concentrator during the IKE phase?
A. RIPEMD
B. ECDHE
C. Diffie-Hellman
D. HTTPS
C. Diffie-Hellman
A network operations manager has added a second row of server racks in the datacenter. These racks face the opposite direction of the first row of racks. Which of the following is the reason the manager installed the racks this way?
A. To lower energy consumption by sharing power outlets
B. To create environmental hot and cold aisles
C. To eliminate the potential for electromagnetic interference
D. To maximize fire suppression capabilities
B. To create environmental hot and cold aisles
Phishing emails frequently take advantage of high-profile catastrophes reported in the news. Which of the following principles BEST describes the weakness being exploited?
A. Intimidation
B. Scarcity
C. Authority
D. Social proof
D. Social proof
New magnetic locks were ordered for an entire building. In accordance with company policy, employee safety is the top priority. In case of a fire where electricity is cut, which of the following should be taken into consideration when installing the new
locks?
A. Fail safe
B. Fault tolerance
C. Fail secure
D. Redundancy
A. Fail safe
Anne, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), has reported that she is getting multiple telephone calls from someone claiming to be from the helpdesk. The caller is asking to verify her network authentication credentials because her computer is broadcasting across the network. This is MOST likely which of the following types of attacks?
A. Vishing
B. Impersonation
C. Spim
D. Scareware
A. Vishing
An administrator discovers the following log entry on a server:
Nov 12 2013 00:23:45 httpd[2342]: GET
/app2/prod/proc/process.php?input=change;cd%20../../../etc;cat%20shadow
Which of the following attacks is being attempted? A. Command injection B. Password attack C. Buffer overflow D. Cross-site scripting
A. Command injection
A security team wants to establish an Incident Response plan. The team has never experienced an incident. Which of the following would BEST help them establish plans and procedures?
A. Table top exercises
B. Lessons learned
C. Escalation procedures
D. Recovery procedures
A. Table top exercises
Which of the following would verify that a threat does exist and security controls can easily be bypassed without actively testing an application?
A. Protocol analyzer
B. Vulnerability scan
C. Penetration test
D. Port scanner
B. Vulnerability scan
Which of the following technologies would be MOST appropriate to utilize when testing a new software patch before a company-wide deployment?
A. Cloud computing
B. Virtualization
C. Redundancy
D. Application control
B. Virtualization
A system administrator needs to implement 802.1x whereby when a user logs into the network, the authentication server communicates to the network switch and assigns the user to the proper VLAN.
Which of the following protocols should be used?
A. RADIUS
B. Kerberos
C. LDAP
D. MSCHAP
A. RADIUS
A security administrator receives notice that a third-party certificate authority has been compromised, and new certificates will need to be issued. Which of the following should the administrator submit to receive a new certificate?
A. CRL B. OSCP C. PFX D. CSR E. CA
D. CSR (Certificate Signing Request)
A forensic analyst is asked to respond to an ongoing network attack on a server. Place the items in the list below in the correct order in which the forensic analyst should preserve them
RAM
CPU Cache
Swap
Hard drive
CPU Cache
RAM
Swap
Hard Drive
Explanation:
When dealing with multiple issues, address them in order of volatility (OOV); always deal with the most volatile first. Volatility can be thought of as the amount of time that you have to collect certain data before a window of opportunity is gone. Naturally, in an investigation, you want to collect everything, but some data will exist longer than others, and you cannot possibly collect all of it once. As an example, the OOV in an investigation may be RAM, hard drive data, CDs/DVDs, and printouts. Order of volatility: Capture system images as a snapshot of what exists, look at network traffic and logs, capture any relevant
video/screenshots/hashes, record time offset on the systems, talk to witnesses, and track total man-hours and expenses associated with the investigation.
A company wants to host a publicly available server that performs the following functions:
Evaluates MX record lookup
Can perform authenticated requests for A and AAA records
Uses RRSIG
Which of the following should the company use to fulfill the above requirements?
A. DNSSEC B. SFTP C. nslookup D. dig E. LDAPS
A. DNSSEC
Explanation:
DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) provides, among other things, cryptographic authenticity of responses using Resource Record Signatures (RRSIG) and authenticated denial of existence using Next-Secure (NSEC) and Hashed-NSEC records (NSEC3).
A security administrator is developing training for corporate users on basic security principles for personal email accounts. Which of the following should be mentioned as the MOST secure way for password recovery?
A. Utilizing a single Q for password recovery
B. Sending a PIN to a smartphone through text message
C. Utilizing CAPTCHA to avoid brute force attacks
D. Use a different e-mail address to recover password
B. Sending a PIN to a smartphone through text message
A company researched the root cause of a recent vulnerability in its software. It was determined that the vulnerability was the result of two updates made in the last release. Each update alone would not have resulted in the vulnerability. In order to prevent similar situations in the future, the company should improve which of the following?
A. Change management procedures
B. Job rotation policies
C. Incident response management
D. Least privilege access controls
A. Change management procedures
A computer on a company network was infected with a zero-day exploit after an employee accidentally opened an email that contained malicious content. The employee recognized the email as malicious and was attempting to delete it, but accidently opened it.
Which of the following should be done to prevent this scenario from occurring again in the future?
A. Install host-based firewalls on all computers that have an email client installed
B. Set the email program default to open messages in plain text
C. Install end-point protection on all computers that access web email
D. Create new email spam filters to delete all messages from that sender
B. Set the email program default to open messages in plain text
A company wants to ensure that the validity of publicly trusted certificates used by its web server can be determined even during an extended internet outage.
Which of the following should be implemented?
A. Recovery agent
B. Ocsp
C. Crl
D. Key escrow
C. Crl (Certificate Revocation List)
An administrator intends to configure an IPSec solution that provides ESP with integrity protection, but not confidentiality protection. Which of the following AES modes of operation would meet this integrity-only requirement?
A. HMAC B. PCBC C. CBC D. GCM E. CFB
A. HMAC (hash-based message authentication code)
The chief security officer (CS0) has issued a new policy that requires that all internal websites be configured for HTTPS traffic only. The network administrator has been tasked to update all internal sites without incurring additional costs.
Which of the following is the best solution for the network administrator to secure each internal website?
A. Use certificates signed by the company CA
B. Use a signing certificate as a wild card certificate
C. Use certificates signed by a public ca
D. Use a self-signed certificate on each internal server
A. Use certificates signed by the company CA
A security program manager wants to actively test the security posture of a system. The system is not yet in production and has no uptime requirement or active user base.
Which of the following methods will produce a report which shows vulnerabilities that were actually exploited?
A. Peer review
B. Component testing
C. Penetration testing
D. Vulnerability testing
C. Penetration testing
A new intern in the purchasing department requires read access to shared documents. Permissions are normally controlled through a group called “Purchasing”, however, the purchasing group permissions allow write access.
Which of the following would be the BEST course of action?
A. Modify all the shared files with read-only permissions for the intern.
B. Create a new group that has only read permissions for the files.
C. Remove all permissions for the shared files.
D. Add the intern to the “Purchasing” group
B. Create a new group that has only read permissions for the files
A business has recently deployed laptops to all sales employees. The laptops will be used primarily from home offices and while traveling, and a high amount of wireless mobile use is expected.
To protect the laptops while connected to untrusted wireless networks, which of the following would be the BEST method for reducing the risk of having the laptops compromised?
A. MAC filtering
B. Virtualization
C. OS hardening
D. Application white-listing
C. OS hardening
During a data breach cleanup, it is discovered that not all of the sites involved have the necessary data wiping tools. The necessary tools are quickly distributed to the required technicians, but when should this problem BEST be revisited?
A. Reporting
B. Preparation
C. Mitigation
D. Lessons Learned
D. Lessons Learned
Joe, a technician, is working remotely with his company-provided laptop at the coffee shop near his home. Joe is concerned that another patron of the coffee shop may be trying to access his laptop.
Which of the following is an appropriate control to use to prevent the other patron from accessing Joe’s laptop directly?
A. full-disk encryption
B. Host-based firewall
C. Current antivirus definitions
D. Latest OS updates
B. Host-based firewall
An attacker uses a network sniffer to capture the packets of a transaction that adds $20 to a gift card. The attacker then user a function of the sniffer to push those packets back onto the network again, adding another $20 to the gift card. This can be
done many times.
Which of the following describes this type of attack?
A. Integer overflow attack B. Smurf attack C. Replay attack D. Buffer overflow attack E. Cross-site scripting attack
C. Replay attack
An organization is moving its human resources system to a cloud services provider. The company plans to continue using internal usernames and passwords with the service provider, but the security manager
does not want the service provider to have a company of the passwords.
Which of the following options meets all of these requirements?
A. Two-factor authentication
B. Account and password synchronization
C. Smartcards with PINS
D. Federated authentication
D. Federated authentication
The data backup window has expanded into the morning hours and has begun to affect production users. The main bottleneck in the process is the time it takes to replicate the backups to separate severs at the offsite data center.
Which of the following uses of deduplication could be implemented to reduce the backup window?
A. Implement deduplication at the network level between the two locations
B. Implement deduplication on the storage array to reduce the amount of drive space needed
C. Implement deduplication on the server storage to reduce the data backed up
D. Implement deduplication on both the local and remote servers
B. Implement deduplication on the storage array to reduce the amount of drive space needed
A penetration testing is preparing for a client engagement in which the tester must provide data that proves and validates the scanning tools’ results. Which of the following is the best method for collecting this information?
A. Set up the scanning system’s firewall to permit and log all outbound connections
B. Use a protocol analyzer to log all pertinent network traffic
C. Configure network flow data logging on all scanning systems
D. Enable debug level logging on the scanning system and all scanning tools used.
B. Use a protocol analyzer to log all pertinent network traffic
Which of the following best describes the initial processing phase used in mobile device forensics?
A. The phone should be powered down and the battery removed to preserve the state of data on any internal or removable
storage utilized by the mobile device
B. The removable data storage cards should be processed first to prevent data alteration when examining the mobile device
C. The mobile device should be examined first, then removable storage and lastly the phone without removable storage
should be examined again
D. The phone and storage cards should be examined as a complete unit after examining the removable storage cards separately
D. The phone and storage cards should be examined as a complete unit after examining the removable storage cards separately
Ann a security analyst is monitoring the IDS console and noticed multiple connections from an internal host to a suspicious call back domain.
Which of the following tools would aid her to decipher the network traffic?
A. Vulnerability Scanner
B. NMAP
C. NETSTAT
D. Packet Analyzer
C. NETSTAT
An administrator is testing the collision resistance of different hashing algorithms. Which of the following is the strongest collision resistance test?
A. Find two identical messages with different hashes
B. Find two identical messages with the same hash
C. Find a common has between two specific messages
D. Find a common hash between a specific message and a random message
A. Find two identical messages with different hashes
The SSID broadcast for a wireless router has been disabled but a network administrator notices that unauthorized users are accessing the wireless network. The administer has determined that attackers are still able to detect the presence of the wireless network despite the fact the SSID has been disabled.
Which of the following would further obscure the presence of the wireless network?
A. Upgrade the encryption to WPA or WPA2
B. Create a non-zero length SSID for the wireless router
C. Reroute wireless users to a honeypot
D. Disable responses to a broadcast probe request
D. Disable responses to a broadcast probe request
Which of the following should be used to implement voice encryption?
A. SSLv3
B. VDSL
C. SRTP
D. VoIP
C. SRTP (Secure Real-Time Protocol)
After a merger, it was determined that several individuals could perform the tasks of a network administrator in the merged organization. Which of the following should have been performed to ensure that employees have proper access?
A. Time-of-day restrictions
B. Change management
C. Periodic auditing of user credentials
D. User rights and permission review
D. User rights and permission review
A company exchanges information with a business partner. An annual audit of the business partner is conducted against the SLA in order to verify:
A. Performance and service delivery metrics
B. Backups are being performed and tested
C. Data ownership is being maintained and audited
D. Risk awareness is being adhered to and enforced
A. Performance and service delivery metrics
Which of the following is the proper way to quantify the total monetary damage resulting from an exploited vulnerability?
A. Calculate the ALE
B. Calculate the ARO
C. Calculate the MTBF
D. Calculate the TCO
A. Calculate the ALE
A security administrator needs to implement a system that detects possible intrusions based upon a vendor-provided list.
Which of the following BEST describes this type of IDS?
A. Signature-based
B. Heuristic
C. Anomaly-based
D. Behavior-based
A. Signature based
The Chief Security Officer (CSO) has reported a rise in data loss but no break-ins have occurred.
By doing which of the following is the CSO most likely to reduce the number of incidents?
A. Implement protected distribution
B. Empty additional firewalls
C. Conduct security awareness training
D. Install perimeter barricades
C. Conduct security awareness training
Having adequate lighting on the outside of a building is an example of which of the following security controls?
A. Deterrent
B. Compensating
C. Detective
D. Preventative
A. Deterrent
During a recent audit, it was discovered that several user accounts belonging to former employees were still active and had valid VPN permissions.
Which of the following would help reduce the amount of risk the organization incurs in this situation in the future?
A. Time-of-day restrictions
B. User access reviews
C. Group-based privileges
D. Change management policies
B. User access reviews
An organization is working with a cloud services provider to transition critical business applications to a hybrid cloud environment. The organization retains sensitive customer data and wants to ensure the provider has sufficient administrative and logical controls in place to protect its data.
In which of the following documents would this concern MOST likely be addressed?
A. Service level agreement
B. Interconnection security agreement
C. Non-disclosure agreement
D. Business process analysis
A. Service level agreement
