CompTIA Security+ Question B-17

An administrator is concerned that a company’s web server has not been patched. Which of the following would be the BEST assessment for the administrator to perform?

A. Vulnerability scan
B. Risk assessment
C. Virus scan
D. Network sniffer

Answer: A

Explanation:
A vulnerability scan is the process of scanning the network and/or I.T. infrastructure for threats and vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities include computer systems that do not have the latest security patches installed. The threats and vulnerabilities are then evaluated in a risk assessment and the necessary actions taken to resolve and vulnerabilities. A vulnerability scan is the automated process of proactively identifying security vulnerabilities of computing systems in a network in order to determine if and where a system can be exploited and/or threatened. While public servers are important for communication and data transfer over the Internet, they open the door to potential security breaches by threat agents, such as malicious hackers. Vulnerability scanning employs software that seeks out security flaws based on a database of known flaws, testing systems for the occurrence of these flaws and generating a report of the findings that an individual or an enterprise can use to tighten the network’s security. Vulnerability scanning typically refers to the scanning of systems that are connected to the Internet but can also refer to system audits on internal networks that are not connected to the Internet in order to assess the threat of rogue software or malicious employees in an enterprise.

CompTIA Security+ Question B-6

When an order was submitted via the corporate website, an administrator noted special characters (e.g., “;–” and “or 1=1 –“) were input instead of the expected letters and numbers.
Which of the following is the MOST likely reason for the unusual results?

A. The user is attempting to highjack the web server session using an open-source browser.
B. The user has been compromised by a cross-site scripting attack (XSS) and is part of a botnet performing DDoS attacks.
C. The user is attempting to fuzz the web server by entering foreign language characters which are incompatible with the website.
D. The user is sending malicious SQL injection strings in order to extract sensitive company or customer data via the website.

Answer: D

Explanation:
The code in the question is an example of a SQL Injection attack. The code ‘1=1’ will always provide a value of true. This can be included in statement designed to return all rows in a SQL table.

SQL injection is a code injection technique, used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents to the attacker). SQL injection must exploit a security vulnerability in an application’s software, for example, when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and unexpectedly executed. SQL injection is mostly known as an attack vector for websites but can be used to attack any type of SQL database.

CompTIA Security+ Question A-82

During a security assessment, an administrator wishes to see which services are running on a remote server. Which of the following should the administrator use?

A. Port scanner
B. Network sniffer
C. Protocol analyzer
D. Process list

Answer: A

Explanation:
Different services use different ports. When a service is enabled on a computer, a network port is opened for that service. For example, enabling the HTTP service on a web server will open port 80 on the server. By determining which ports are open on a remote server, we can determine which services are running on that server. A port scanner is a software application designed to probe a server or host for open ports. This is often used by administrators to verify security policies of their networks and by attackers to identify running services on a host with the view to compromise it. A port scan or portscan can be defined as a process that sends client requests to a range of server port addresses on a host, with the goal of finding an active port. While not a nefarious process in and of itself, it is one used by hackers to probe target machine services with the aim of exploiting a known vulnerability of that service. However the majority of uses of a port scan are not attacks and are simple probes to determine services available on a remote machine.

CompTIA Security+ Question A-40

The system administrator is reviewing the following logs from the company web server:
12:34:56 GET /directory_listing.php?user=admin&pass=admin1
12:34:57 GET /directory_listing.php?user=admin&pass=admin2
12:34:58 GET /directory_listing.php?user=admin&pass=1admin
12:34:59 GET /directory_listing.php?user=admin&pass=2admin
Which of the following is this an example of?

A. Online rainbow table attack
B. Offline brute force attack
C. Offline dictionary attack
D. Online hybrid attack

Answer: D

Explanation:
This is an example of an online hybrid attack. A hybrid attack is a combination of attacks. In this example, we have a combination of a dictionary attack and a brute-force attack. A brute force attack is a trial-and-error method used to obtain information such as a user password or personal identification number (PIN). In a brute force attack, automated software is used to generate a large number of consecutive guesses as to the value of the desired data. A dictionary attack uses a list of words to use as passwords. The combination or hybrid attack adds characters or numbers or even other words to the beginning or end of the password guesses. In this example we have a password guess of ‘admin’. From the word admin, we have four combinations, ‘admin1, 1admin, admin2, 2admin’.

CompTIA Security+ Simulation 11

A security administrator discovers that an attack has been completed against a node on the corporate network. All available logs were collected and stored.

You must review all network logs to discover the scope of the attack, check the box of the node(s) that have been compromised and drag and drop the appropriate actions to complete the incident response on the network. The environment is a critical production environment; perform the LEAST disruptive actions on the network, while still performing the appropriate incident responses.

Instructions: The web server, database server, IDS, and User PC are clickable. Check the box of the node(s) that have been compromised and drag and drop the appropriate actions to complete the incident response on the network. Not all actions may be used, and order is not important. If at anytime you would like to bring back the initial state of the simulation, please select the Reset button. When you have completed the simulation, please select the Done button to submit. Once the simulation is submitted, please select the Next button to continue.

Correct Answer:

Database server was attacked; actions should be to capture network traffic and Chain of Custody.

Explanation:
(The database server logs shows the Audit Failure and Audit Success attempts)It is only logical that all the logs will be stored on the database server and the least disruption action on the network to take as a response to the incident would be to check the logs (since these are already collected and stored) and maintain a chain of custody of those logs.


IDS Server Log:

Web Server Log:


Database Server Log:

Users PC Log:

CompTIA Security+ Simulation 8

HOTSPOT
The security administrator has installed a new firewall which implements an implicit DENY policy by default Click on the firewall and configure it to allow ONLY the following communication.

1. The Accounting workstation can ONLY access the web server on the public network over the default HTTPS port. The accounting workstation should not access other networks.
2. The HR workstation should be restricted to communicate with the Financial server ONLY, over the default SCP port
3. The Admin workstation should ONLY be able to access the servers on the secure network over the default TFTP port.

Instructions: The firewall will process the rules in a top-down manner in order as a first match. The port number must be typed in and only one port number can be entered per rule Type ANY for all ports. The original firewall configuration can be reset at any time by pressing the reset button. Once you have met the simulation requirements, click save and then Done to submit.


Correct Answer:



Implicit deny is the default security stance that says if you aren’t specifically granted access or privileges for a resource, you’re denied access by default.

Rule #1 allows the Accounting workstation to ONLY access the web server on the public network over the default HTTPS port, which is TCP port 443.

Rule #2 allows the HR workstation to ONLY communicate with the Financial server over the default SCP port, which is TCP Port 22

Rule #3 & Rule #4 allow the Admin workstation to ONLY access the Financial and Purchasing servers located on the secure network over the default TFTP port, which is Port 69.

References:
Stewart, James Michael, CompTIA Security+ Review Guide, Sybex, Indianapolis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers

CompTIA Network+ Question C-40

A network technician needs to set up two public facing web servers and watns to ensure that if they are compromised the intruder cannot access the intranet. Which of the following security techniques should be used?

A. Place them behind honeypots
B. Place them in a separate subnet
C. Place them between two internal firewalls
D. Place them in the demilitarized zone

Correct Answer: D

CompTIA Network+ Question C-29

A network technician needs to separate a web server listening on port 80 from the internal LAN and secure the server from the public Internet. The web server should be accessible to the public Internet over port 80 but not the private LAN. Currently, the network is segmented with a network-based firewall using the following IP addressing scheme on each interface:

Which of the following ones should the technician use to place the web server and which of the following firewall rules should the technician configure?

A. Place the web server in the public zone with an inbound rule from eth0 interface to accept traffic over port 80 designated to the web server
B. Place the web server in the DMZ with an inbound rule from eth0 interface to eth1 to accept traffic over port 80 designated to the web server
C. Place the web server in the private zone with an inbound rule from eth2 interface to eth1 to accept traffic over port 80 designated to the web server
D. Place the web server in the DMZ with an inbound rule from eth1 interface to eth0 to accept traffic over port 80 designated to the web server

Correct Answer: B

CompTIA Network+ Question B-65

Users are reporting their network is extremely slow. The technician discovers pings to external host have excessive response times. However, internal pings to printers and other PCs have acceptable response times. Which of the following steps should the technician take NEXT?

A. Determine if any network equipment was replaced recently
B. Verify malware has not disabled the users’ PC firewalls
C. Replace users’ network cables with known-good network cables
D. Power cycle the web server

Correct Answer: A

CompTIA Network+ Question B-56

An outside organization has completed a penetration test for a company. One of the items on the report is reflecting the ability to read SSL traffic from the web server. Which of the following is the MOST likely mitigation for this reported item?

A. Ensure patches are deployed
B. Install an IDS on the network
C. Configure the firewall to block traffic on port 443
D. Implement a VPN for employees

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:
As vulnerabilities are discovered, the vendors of the operating systems or applications often respond by releasing a patch. A patch is designed to correct a known bug or fix a known vulnerability, such as in this case to be able to read SSL traffic, in a piece of software.
A patch differs from an update, which, in addition to fixing a known bug or vulnerability, adds one or more features to the software being updated.