COSN 271 - Chapter 2 Overview

Which impact of vulnerabilities occurs when an attacker uses information gained from a data breach to commit fraud by doing things like opening new accounts with the victim's information?

Identity theft

Having a legitimate reason for approaching someone to ask for sensitive information is called what?

Impersonation

Gathering system hardware information.

Reconnaissance

In which phase of an attack does the attacker gather information about the target?

Reconnaissance

You have installed antivirus software on the computers on your network. You update the definition and engine files and configure the software to update those files every day. What else should you do to protect your systems from malware?

> Educate users about malware. > Schedule regular full-system scans.

Which of the following are characteristics of a rootkit?

> Resides below regular antivirus software detection. > Requires administrator-level privileges for installation.

Which of the following are examples of social engineering attacks? (Select two.)

> Shoulder surfing > Keylogger

Which of the following is the BEST definition of the term hacker?

A general term used to describe any individual who uses their technical knowledge to gain unauthorized access to an organization.

Cybercriminal

A person (or team of individuals) who use technology to steal sensitive information for a profit. Theyare often associated with large organized crime syndicates such as the mafia.

Which of the following describes a logic bomb?

A program that performs a malicious activity at a specific time or after a triggering event.

Which of the following BEST describes an inside attacker?

An unintentional threat actor. This is the most common threat.

An organization's receptionist received a phone call from an individual claiming to be a partner in a high-level project and requesting sensitive information. The individual is engaging in which type of social engineering?

Authority

Sometimes, an attacker's goal is to prevent access to a system rather than to gain access. This form of attack is often called a denial-of-service attack and causes which impact?

Availability loss

A collection of zombie computers have been set up to collect personal information. Which type of malware do the zombie computers represent?

Botnet

Penetrating system defenses to gain unauthorized access.

Breaching

In 2001, a worm exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) to infect over 250,000 systems in under nine hours. What was this worm called?

Code Red

Jason is at home, attempting to access the website for his music store. When he goes to the website, it has a simple form asking for a name, email, and phone number. This is not the music store website. Jason is sure the website has been hacked. How did the attacker accomplish this hack?

DNS cache poisoning

When confidential or protected data is exposed, either intentionally or accidentally, it is considered to be which of the following?

Data breach

DNS tunneling is a common method that allows an attacker to accomplish which attack?

Data exfiltration - This is is a method that allows an attacker to hide data being sent to an outside host by disguising it as DNS traffic on UDP port 53. Because DNS is critical to most network operations, it is generally not blocked on the firewall.

Every ACME computer comes with the same account created at the factory. Which kind of vulnerability is this?

Default accounts and passwords

Ron, a hacker, wants to get access to a prestigious law firm he has been watching for a while. June, an administrative assistant at the law firm, is having lunch at the food court around the corner from her office. Ron notices that June has a picture of a dog on her phone. He casually walks by and starts a conversation about dogs. Which phase of the social engineering process is Ron in?

Development phase

Which of the following is a common social engineering attack?

Distributing hoax virus-information emails

Compliments, misinformation, feigning ignorance, and being a good listener are tactics of which social engineering technique?

Elictitation

Configuring additional rights to do more than breach the system.

Escalating privileges

Crashing systems.

Exploitation

Stealing information.

Exploitation

Which kind of virus operates only in memory and usually exploits a trusted application like PowerShell to circumvent traditional endpoint security solutions?

Fileless virus. This operates only in memory to avoid detection by traditional endpoint security solutions that are focused on matching signatures to files that have been written to the hard drive.

Which of the following threat actors seeks to defame, shed light on, or cripple an organization or government?

Hacktivist

In healthcare, regulations often dictate that important systems remain unpatched to maintain compliance. Which kind of vulnerability does this introduce?

Inherent vulnerabilities

An employee stealing company data could be an example of which kind of threat actor?

Internal threat

Which of the following best describes spyware?

It monitors the actions you take on your machine and sends the information back to its originating source.

A script kiddie is a threat actor who lacks knowledge and sophistication. Script kiddie attacks often seek to exploit well-known vulnerabilities in systems. What is the BEST defense against script kiddie attacks?

Keep systems up to date and use standard security practices.

Eliminating single points of failure.

Layering

Implementing multiple security measures to protect the same asset.

Layering

Social engineers are master manipulators. Which of the following are tactics they might use?

Moral obligation, ignorance, and threatening

A hacker scans hundreds of IP addresses randomly on the internet until they find an exploitable target. What kind of attack is this?

Opportunistic attack

Which security control, if not applied, can allow an attacker to bypass other security controls?

Physical access control

Giving groups only the access they need to do their job and nothing more.

Principle of least privilege

Giving users only the access they need to do their job and nothing more.

Principle of least privilege

A user is able to access privileged administrative features with an account that is not granted administrator rights. Which type of vulnerability is this?

Privilege escalation

The constant change in personal habits and passwords to prevent anticipated events and exploitation.

Randomness

A type of malware that prevents the system from being used until the victim pays the attacker money is known as what?

Ransomware

Which kind of malware provides an attacker with administrative control over a target computer through a backdoor?

Remote Access Trojan (RAT)

Any attack involving human interaction of some kind is referred to as what?

Social engineering

Preparing a computer to perform additional tasks in the attack.

Staging

The root account has all privileges and no barriers. Which of the following is another name for the root account?

Superuser account

Which of the following is a program that appears to be a legitimate application, utility, game, or screensaver, but performs malicious activities surreptitiously?

Trojan horse

Diversifying layers of defense.

Variety

Which of the following is the BEST example of the principle of least privilege?

Wanda has been given access to the files that she needs for her job.

A wireless access point configured to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is an example of which kind of vulnerability?

Weak security configurations