CS150 chapter 1,2, and 3 test practice/study
Which of the following is a characteristic of a potentially unwanted program (PUP)?
A PUP interferes and obstructs the user with web browsing and pop-up windows.
Ian, a systems administrator, was checking systems on Monday morning when he noticed several alarms on his screen. He found many of the normal settings in his computer and programs changed, but he was sure no one had physically entered his room since Friday. If Ian did not make these changes, which of the events below is the most likely reason for the anomalies?
A backdoor was installed previously and utilized over the weekend to access the computer and the programs.
Which of the following statements correctly describes the disadvantage of a hardware-based keylogger?
A hardware-based keylogger must be physically installed and removed without detection.
Which of the following is a characteristic of a vulnerability scan that is not a characteristic of a penetration test?
A vulnerability scan is usually automated.
Zero-day vulnerabilities and configuration vulnerabilities can heavily impact a system if exploited. How should you differentiate between a zero-day vulnerability and a configuration vulnerability?
A zero-day vulnerability is an unknown vulnerability in released software that is found and exploited by a threat actor, whereas a configuration vulnerability is caused by improper settings in hardware or software.
What are the primary features of a security information event management (SIEM) tool?
Aggregation, correlation, event deduplication, time synchronization, and alerting
What is the primary goal of penetration testing?
Attempt to uncover deep vulnerabilities and then manually exploit them
Which penetration testing consultants are not given any knowledge of the network nor any elevated privileges?
Black box
Which threat actors violate computer security for personal gain?
Black hat hackers
Dillip is assigned the role of a SOC developer who must build different teams under the SOC. He must build a new team that will put security defenses in place to prevent another team from penetrating the network. Which team should he build to monitor the other team's attacks and shore up security defenses as necessary?
Blue team
Japan's cybercrime control center noticed that around 200,000 Tokyo computers are infected by bots, and all these bots are remotely controlled by a single attacker. What is this attacker referred to as?
Bot herder
Which threat actors sell their knowledge to other attackers or governments?
Brokers
Which of the following is an example of a request forgery malware?
CSRF
While Andel is logging into his email through a browser, the login window disappears. Andel attempts to log in again and is successful. Days later, he goes to log into his email, and his attempt fails. He receives a message indicating that his username and/or password are invalid.What is Andel likely a victim of?
CSRF
Shanise is an IT security professional for a large private bank. She got an alert that the bank website received a funds transfer request that was correctly credentialed but flagged as being out of the account owner's usual pattern. If the alert is correct, what type of attack has likely occurred?
CSRF attack
What is another term commonly used to define cross-site request forgery (CSRF):
Client-side request forgery
Which type of threat actor would benefit the most from accessing your enterprise's new machine learning algorithm research and development program?
Competitors
In an interview, the interviewer introduced the following scenario:An enterprise is hosting all its computing resources on a cloud platform, and you need to identify which vulnerability is most likely to occur.Which of the following should you choose?
Configuration vulnerability
Your company recently purchased routers with new and updated features and deployed them in the highly secure enterprise network without changing the default settings. A few days later, the enterprise network suffered a data breach, and you are assigned to prepare a report on the data breach. Which of the following vulnerabilities should you identify as the source of the breach?
Configuration vulnerability
What is the primary difference between credentialed and non-credentialed scans?
Credentialed scans use valid authentication credentials to mimic threat actors, while non-credentialed scans do not provide authentication credentials.
Which issue can arise from security updates and patches?
Difficulty patching firmware
Which of the following is a physical social engineering technique?
Dumpster diving
Which of the following is NOT an automated vulnerability scanning tool?
ELK Stack
Which of the following is an attack vector used by threat actors to penetrate a system?
Which of the following is the most common method for delivering malware?
Which of the following is a feature of a fileless virus?
Fileless viruses are easy to detect.
Kile is assigned a role as a grey box penetration tester in the financial sector. He has to conduct a pen testing attack on all the application servers in the network. Which of the following tasks should he perform first while conducting a penetration testing attack on a network?
Footprinting
Which of the following penetration testing consultants have limited knowledge of the network and some elevated privileges?
Gray box
Your enterprise has played fast and loose with customer information for years. While there has been no significant breach of information that could damage the organization and/or their customers, many in the enterprise feel it is only a matter of time before a major leak occurs.Which type of threat actor is an employee who wishes to personally ensure that the enterprise is exposed and blocked from accessing their customers' information until they ensure more secure protocols?
Hacktivist
A federal appeals court recently made a judgment that caused significant public outrage. Soon after the ruling, the court's website was hacked, and the content was replaced with the text "Equal justice for all."Which of the following type of threat actors attacked the court's site?
Hacktivists
Hacktivists and state actors are huge threats to government systems. What is the main difference between hacktivists and state actors
Hacktivists misuse a computer system or network for socially or politically motivated reasons, whereas state actors are covertly sponsored by a government to attack its foes
Which of the following is considered an industry-specific cybersecurity regulation?
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
An unauthorized person recently accessed your enterprise network. The security team had received a call from the threat actor claiming to be a higher official. They followed the attacker's instructions to log them onto a specific webpage, leading to the exposure of enterprise network credentials.Which of the following social engineering techniques was used here?
Impersonation and phishing
Which of the following describes a memory leak attack?
In a memory leak attack, the threat actor takes advantage of the programming error of not freeing the memory after executing a process, taking advantage of the device's low memory conditions to attack.
Threat actors focused on financial gain often attack which of the following main target categories?
Individual users
How can a configuration review reduce the impact of a vulnerability scan on the network's overall performance?
It ensures the scan is designed to meet its intended goals by defining scope and sensitivity levels.
Kate decides to download an extension to her favorite browser to quickly store links on her spreadsheet software. While downloading the software, she ignores the opt-out check box that allows the extension to download a search toolbar.What has occurred here?
Kate has installed a potentially unwanted program (PUP).
Kia recently noticed that when she browses her favorite online shopping site, she is immediately redirected to a competitor's site. What is happening here, and what is the best option for Kia to fix this situation?
Kia must uninstall the toolbar software and the accompanying components she has recent installed on her browser.
Which of the following computing platforms is highly vulnerable to attacks?
Legacy
Which of the following types of platforms is known for its vulnerabilities due to age?
Legacy platform
Terrence, an executive VP of IT at Sigma Bank, noticed that yesterday, there was a major attack on several thousands of bank employees' computers located at geographically different locations where files and data from the computers got deleted. It was also noticed that several confidential files containing customer data were deleted from the bank's server in multiple locations, and the CEO's emails were deleted from the mail server. Since the bank was compliant with cybersecurity measures, Terrence suspects an internal hand in this activity. While going through the records of all employees working in the IT security of the bank, both past and present, he notices that there is an employee, Chris, who has enough experience to launch this attack, was unhappy with his annual review last year, and had left the bank three months ago.If Terrence were able to single Chris out as the one responsible for the attack, what kind of an attack would this be?
Logic-bomb
Alice, a vulnerability assessment engineer at a bank, is told to find all the vulnerabilities on an internet-facing web application server running on port HTTPS. When she finishes the vulnerability scan, she finds several different vulnerabilities at different levels. How should she proceed?
Look at the priority and the accuracy of the vulnerability
Which of the following is a subset of artificial intelligence?
Machine learning
Which of the following offensive tools can be used by penetration testers post-exploitation or successful compromise of a user account in a network that dumps passwords from memory and hashes, PINs, and Kerberos tickets, and thus are used for privilege escalation attacks?
Mimikatz and hashcat
Keily is a vulnerability assessment engineer. She is told to find surface vulnerabilities on all internet-facing web servers in the network. Which of the following are surface vulnerabilities that she should initially chase?
Missing patches, lack of OS hardening, network design flaw, lack of application hardening, weak passwords, and misconfigurations
Which of the following tools can be used to scan 16 IP addresses for vulnerabilities?
Nessus Essentials
What is the fastest-running vulnerability scan, and why does this type of scan run so fast?
Non-credentialed scans perform fundamental actions such as looking for open ports and finding software that will respond to requests.
Which of the following techniques is a method of passive reconnaissance?
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Which of the following compliance standards was introduced to provide a minimum degree of security to organizations who handle customer information such as debit card and credit card details daily?
PCIDSS
What is an officially released software security update intended to repair a vulnerability called?
Patch
Which of the following is the advantage of penetration testing over vulnerability scanning?
Penetration testing uncovers and exploits deep vulnerabilities, while vulnerability scanning only discovers surface vulnerabilities.
Social engineering is a means of eliciting information by relying on the weaknesses of individuals. How should you differentiate between the social engineering techniques of phishing and pharming?
Phishing involves sending an email message or displaying a web announcement that falsely claims to be from a legitimate enterprise, whereas pharming is a redirection technique that attempts to exploit how a URL is converted into its corresponding IP.
You work for an enterprise that provides various cybersecurity services. You are assigned to examine an enterprise's network and suggest security measures modifications, if necessary. On examining the network, you find that the enterprise hosts most of its computing resources on a cloud platform and few resources on-premises, and both seem to have secure settings implemented. You also find that the enterprise computers use the Windows XP operating system.Which of the following vulnerabilities should you insist on fixing first?
Platform vulnerability
Which of the following is a social engineering method that attempts to influence the subject before the event occurs?
Prepending
Khalid joins a security team where he is assigned an SOC developer role and has to build different teams under SOC. Which of the following teams should he build to deal with providing real-time feedback related to security incidents and threat detections, which can then be utilized to facilitate better prioritization of threats and a mature way of detecting threats?
Purple team
Which of the following is a form of malware attack that uses specialized communication protocols?
RAT
What does ransomware do to an endpoint device?
Ransomware attacks the endpoint device holding it hostage by preventing it from functioning unless the user fulfills the ransom payment demanded.
What type of attack occurs when the threat actor snoops and intercepts the digital data transmitted by the computer and resends that data, impersonating the user?
Replay
Which standardized framework was developed by NIST to be used as a guidance document designed to help organizations assess and manage risks to their information and systems, and are also used as a comprehensive roadmap that organizations can use to seamlessly integrate their cybersecurity?
Risk management framework (RMF)
Robert is a black box penetration tester who conducted pen testing attacks on all of the network's application servers. He was able to exploit a vulnerability and gain access to the system using a mimikatz tool. Which of the following activities did he perform using mimikatz, and which task should he perform next?
Robert used mimikatz for credential harvesting, and should perform privilege escalation using a high-privileged account next.
Which type of malware can hide its agenda inside other processes, making it undetectable, and what is it usually used for?
Rootkit, a malware that uses the lower layers of the operating system or undocumented functions to make alterations to the operating system's processes
Which of the following technologies can be used together for data management in security infrastructure and collecting and analyzing data.
SIEM and SOAR
A web application with an SQL server database is found to be compromised by an attacker. On examination, the email IDs of the database have been found modified. This was due to improper validation in the input fields exploited by the attacker.What is the probable attack in the above scenario?
SQL Injection
What is the name of the process where a website validates user input before the application uses the input?
Sanitizing
A cyber analyst needs to quickly do a vulnerability scan on an enterprise network with many devices. Which approach should the analyst take?
Scan the most important devices for as long as it takes for each device
In cybersecurity, a threat actor is an individual or an entity responsible for cyber incidents against the technical equipment of enterprises and users. How should you differentiate an attack by a script kiddie from that of a gray hat hacker
Script kiddies use automated attack software created by other hackers for personal gain, whereas gray hat hackers create their own attack software to showcase vulnerabilities present in a system to the world.
Smitha, an employee working in the accounts department, reported to the information security officer that she could not access her computer. James, the security officer, noticed the following on Smitha's system:On booting the computer, the following message was flashing on the computer screen with the IRS logo:"This computer is locked by the Internal Revenue Service. It has come to our attention that you are transferring funds to other agencies using this computer without compliance with the local income tax laws. As per section 22 of the U.S. Income Tax Act, the transmission of funds without applicable taxes is prohibited. Your IP address is identified in this fraudulent transaction and is locked to prevent further unlawful activities. This offense attracts a penalty of $400.00 for the first offense. You are hereby given 16 hours to resolve this issue, failing which you shall be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. You may make a secure payment by clicking on the following link. If you face any issues, you may reach out to us at [email protected]."The message will not close, nor is there access to applications or files on the computer; however, James can open shared files and folders on Smitha's computer through the network.What is your inference about the problem faced by Smitha on her computer?
Smitha's computer is compromised by ransomware.
What is a variation of a common social engineering attack targeting a specific user?
Spear phishing
Which attack embeds malware-distributing links in instant messages?
Spim
Over the last few days, several employees in your enterprise reported seeing strange messages containing links in their company's IM account. Even though no one has clicked on the messages, they are spreading throughout the network.Which type of malicious activity is this?
Spimming
What is a risk to data when training a machine learning (ML) application?
Tainted training data for machine learning
Which of the following describes the action of an SQL injection into a database server?
The SQL injection inserts specially created structured query language statements to manipulate the database server, giving control of the database to the attacker, who can then manipulate the database.
Natasha, a network security administrator for an online travel portal, noticed that her website was the victim of an SQL injection. She decided to study the SQL queries to find which one made this vulnerability in the database, and she noticed the following SQL code piece executed on the database:'whatever' AND email IS NULL;What has been accessed by the attacker running this SQL injection?
The attacker has determined the names of different types of fields in the database.
An attacker has changed the value of a variable used when copying files from one cloud server to a local drive. What is the most likely motive behind the attack?
The attacker is using an integer overflow attack to initiate a buffer overflow that can allow them to take over the machine.
Which of the following is a primary difference between a red team and a white team?
The red team scans for vulnerabilities and exploits them manually, whereas the white team defines the rules of the penetration testing.
A few computers at a high-security software firm location have been compromised. The threat actor took user videos, confidential information like bank account IDs and passwords, email IDs and passwords, and computer screenshots. These confidential data have been shared every three hours from the computers to the threat actor. Which of the following is correct, based on the evaluation of the above observation?
This is a software keylogger attack, as screenshots, video captures, and keystrokes have been routinely monitored and periodically shared.
The files in James's computer were found spreading within the device without any human action. As an engineer, you were requested to identify the problem and help James resolve it. During file code inspection, you noticed that certain types of files in the computer have similar codes.You found that the problem is coming from a set of codes that are not part of the actual files, appended at the bottom of the file. You also noticed a transfer control code written at the beginning of the files giving control to the code at the bottom of the file.Which type of infection is this a characteristic of?
This is a typical characteristic of an endpoint device infected with a file-based virus attack.
Zeda Corporation provides online training solutions to global customers. To provide e-learning solutions, it integrates with multiple vendor platforms. This ensures seamless transfer to multiple operators' solutions through sign on. Joe, an IT security administrator, noticed that a threat actor has attacked the platform and stolen the user data. The source of this vulnerability was identified as one of the integrated external applications.What type of attack is this?
This is an API attack.
Which operation is carried out by proactively searching security logs for cyber threats that have thus far gone undetected.
Threat hunting
Several websites use URLs similar to one of the most globally popular websites, attempting to attract traffic if a user misspells the popular website's URL. What is this social engineering technique called?
Typo squatting
A vulnerability assessment engineer performed vulnerability scanning on active directory servers and discovered that the active directory server is using a lower version of Kerberos. To alert management to the risk behind using a lower version of Kerberos, he needs to explain what an attacker can do to leverage the vulnerabilities in it. Which of the following actions can the attacker perform after exploiting vulnerabilities in Kerberos?
Use privilege escalation
What is the most accurate explanation of sentiment analysis, and what kind of a tool or product can be utilized to perform this operation?
Using text analysis techniques and IBM QRadar to interpret and classify emotions (positive, negative, and neutral) within text data
Juan, a cybersecurity expert, has been hired by an organization whose networks have been compromised by a malware attack. After analyzing the network systems, Juan submits a report to the company mentioning that the devices are infected with malware that uses a split infection technique on files.Which malware attack is Juan reporting?
Virus
Your enterprise experienced several technical issues over the last few days. There were multiple instances of passwords needing to be changed and other issues causing downtime. Management has started receiving voicemails regarding fraudulent activities on their accounts. While the voicemails sound authentic, the help desk concludes that they are fake.What type of malicious activity will this be considered?
Vishing
There is often confusion between vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. What is the best explanation of the difference between vulnerability scanning and penetration testing?
Vulnerability scanning is performed using an automated tool to scan a network for known vulnerability signatures. Penetration testing involves attempting to manually uncover deep vulnerabilities just as a threat actor would, and then exploiting them.
Which of the following is the most efficient means of discovering wireless signals?
War flying
Attackers have taken over a site commonly used by an enterprise's leadership team to order new raw materials. The site is also visited by leadership at several other enterprises, so taking this site will allow for attacks on many organizations.Which type of malicious activity is this?
Watering hole
Which of the following is a configuration vulnerability?
Weak encryption
Your company is considering updating several electronic devices used in the enterprise network. The third-party service provider that your company approached says that they require access to the enterprise network in order to implement the updates. As the chief information security officer, you are asked to analyze the requirement and submit a report on potential vulnerabilities when giving a third-party access to the network.Which of the following vulnerabilities should you list as the most likely to affect the enterprise network?
Weakest Link
William downloaded some free software to help him with photo editing. A few days later, William noticed several personal photographs were modified and posted to various social media pages with obscene comments. He also noticed that there were videos of him that were morphed and circulated on adult websites. The videos were obviously taken using his webcam.What should William do to fix his problem and prevent it from happening again in the future?
William should run an antimalware program and scan for all known RATs, then quarantine and remove the infected file(s). To prevent this in the future, he should only download software from trusted websites.
