Free ECCouncil 312-50v12 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 6

Active Online Attacks: Hash Injection/Pass-the-Hash (PtH) Attack A hash injection/PtH attack allows an attacker to inject a compromised hash into a local session and use the hash to validate network resources The attacker finds and extracts a logged-on domain admin account hash The attacker uses the extracted hash to log on to the domain controller

The security strategy that you would likely suggest is to adopt a Continual/Adaptive Security Strategy involving ongoing prediction, prevention, detection, and response actions to ensure comprehensive computer network defense. This strategy is based on the concept of continuous monitoring and improvement of the security posture of an organization, using a feedback loop that integrates various security activities and technologies. A Continual/Adaptive Security Strategy aims to proactively identify and mitigate emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and risks, as well as to respond effectively and efficiently to security incidents and breaches. A Continual/Adaptive Security Strategy can help enhance the organization’s security stance by providing the following benefits12:

• It can reduce the attack surface and the exposure time of the organization’s network infrastructure, by applying timely patches, updates, and configurations, as well as by implementing security controls and policies.
• It can increase the visibility and awareness of the organization’s network activity and behavior, by collecting, analyzing, and correlating data from various sources, such as logs, sensors, alerts, and reports.
• It can improve the detection and prevention capabilities of the organization, by using advanced tools and techniques, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, threat intelligence, and behavioral analytics, to identify and block malicious or anomalous patterns and indicators.
• It can enhance the response and recovery processes of the organization, by using automated and orchestrated actions, such as isolation, quarantine, remediation, and restoration, to contain and resolve security incidents and breaches, as well as by conducting lessons learned and root cause analysis to prevent recurrence.

The other options are not as appropriate as option C for the following reasons:

• A. Develop an in-depth Risk Management process, involving identification, assessment, treatment, tracking, and review of risks to control the potential effects on the organization: This option is not sufficient because risk management is only one aspect of a comprehensive security strategy, and it does not address the dynamic and evolving nature of cyber threats and vulnerabilities. Risk management is a process of identifying, analyzing, evaluating, and treating the risks that may affect the organization’s objectives and operations, as well as monitoring and reviewing the effectiveness of the risk treatment measures3. Risk management can help the organization prioritize and allocate resources for security, but it cannot guarantee the prevention or detection of security incidents and breaches, nor the response and recovery from them.
• B. Establish a Defense-in-Depth strategy, incorporating multiple layers of security measures to increase the complexity and decrease the likelihood of a successful attack: This option is not optimal because defense-in-depth is a traditional and static approach to security, and it may not be able to cope with the sophisticated and persistent attacks that exploit unknown or zero-day vulnerabilities. Defense-in-depth is a strategy of implementing multiple and diverse security controls and mechanisms at different layers of the organization’s network infrastructure, such as perimeter, network, endpoint, application, and data, to provide redundancy and resilience against attacks4. Defense-in-depth can help the organization protect its assets and systems from unauthorized access or damage, but it cannot ensure the timely detection and response to security incidents and breaches, nor the continuous improvement of the security posture.
• D. Implement an Information Assurance (IA) policy focusing on ensuring the integrity, availability, confidentiality, and authenticity of information systems: This option is not comprehensive because information assurance is a subset of cybersecurity, and it does not cover all the aspects of a holistic security strategy. Information assurance is a discipline of managing the risks associated with the use, processing, storage, and transmission of information and data, and ensuring the protection of the information and data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, modification, or destruction5. Information assurance can help the organization safeguard its information and data from compromise or loss, but it does not address the prevention, detection, and response to security incidents and breaches, nor the adaptation and innovation of the security technologies and processes.

References:

• 1: Continual/Adaptive Security Strategy - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
• 2: Continual Adaptive Security: A New Approach to Cybersecurity | SecurityWeek.Com
• 3: Risk Management - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
• 4: Defense in Depth - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
• 5: Information Assurance - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

NIST Special Publication 800-53 provides a catalog of security and privacy controls for all U.S. federal information systems except those related to national security. It is published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. NIST develops and issues standards, guidelines, and other publications to assist federal agencies in implementing the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA) and to help with managing cost-effective programs to protect their information and information systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RADIUS

Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) is a networking protocol that provides centralized authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) management for users who connect and use a network service.

RADIUS is a client/server protocol that runs in the application layer, and can use either TCP or UDP. Network access servers, which control access to a network, usually contain a RADIUS client component that communicates with the RADIUS server. RADIUS is often the back-end of choice for 802.1X authentication. A RADIUS server is usually a background process running on UNIX or Microsoft Windows.

Authentication and authorization

The user or machine sends a request to a Network Access Server (NAS) to gain access to a particular network resource using access credentials. The credentials are passed to the NAS device via the link-layer protocol—for example, Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) in the case of many dialup or DSL providers or posted in an HTTPS secure web form.

In turn, the NAS sends a RADIUS Access Request message to the RADIUS server, requesting authorization to grant access via the RADIUS protocol.

This request includes access credentials, typically in the form of username and password or security certificate provided by the user. Additionally, the request may contain other information which the NAS knows about the user, such as its network address or phone number, and information regarding the user's physical point of attachment to the NAS.

The RADIUS server checks that the information is correct using authentication schemes such as PAP, CHAP or EAP. The user's proof of identification is verified, along with, optionally, other information related to the request, such as the user's network address or phone number, account status, and specific network service access privileges. Historically, RADIUS servers checked the user's information against a locally stored flat-file database. Modern RADIUS servers can do this or can refer to external sources—commonly SQL, Kerberos, LDAP, or Active Directory servers—to verify the user's credentials.

Shape Description automatically generated with medium confidence

The RADIUS server then returns one of three responses to the NAS:

1) Access-Reject,

2) Access-Challenge,

3) Access-Accept.

Access-Reject

The user is unconditionally denied access to all requested network resources. Reasons may include failure to provide proof of identification or an unknown or inactive user account.

Access-Challenge

Requests additional information from the user such as a secondary password, PIN, token, or card. Access-Challenge is also used in more complex authentication dialogs where a secure tunnel is established between the user machine and the Radius Server in a way that the access credentials are hidden from the NAS.

Access-Accept

The user is granted access. Once the user is authenticated, the RADIUS server will often check that the user is authorized to use the network service requested. A given user may be allowed to use a company's wireless network, but not its VPN service, for example. Again, this information may be stored locally on the RADIUS server or may be looked up in an external source such as LDAP or Active Directory.

In order to circumvent network protection tools, cybercriminals may forge a TCP session more efficiently by submitting a bogus SYN packet, a series of ACK packets, and at least one RST (reset) or FIN (connection termination) packet. This tactic allows crooks to get around defenses that only keep tabs on incoming traffic rather than analyzing return traffic.

Wireless network assessment determines the vulnerabilities in an organization’s wireless networks. In the past, wireless networks used weak and defective data encryption mechanisms. Now, wireless network standards have evolved, but many networks still use weak and outdated security mechanisms and are open to attack. Wireless network assessments try to attack wireless authentication mechanisms and gain unauthorized access. This type of assessment tests wireless networks and identifies rogue networks that may exist within an organization’s perimeter. These assessments audit client-specified sites with a wireless network. They sniff wireless network traffic and try to crack encryption keys. Auditors test other network access if they gain access to the wireless network.

The most effective evasion technique to bypass the IDS signature detection while performing a SQL Injection attack is to leverage string concatenation to break identifiable keywords. This technique involves splitting SQL keywords or operators into smaller parts and joining them with string concatenation operators, such as ‘+’ or ‘||’. This way, the SQL query can still be executed by the database engine, but the IDS cannot recognize the keywords or operators as malicious, as they are hidden within strings. For example, the hacker could replace the keyword ‘OR’ with ‘O’||‘R’ or ‘O’+‘R’ in the SQL query, and the IDS would not be able to match the signature of a typical SQL injection pattern12.

The other options are not as effective as option D for the following reasons:

• A. Implement case variation by altering the case of SQL statements: This option is not effective because most SQL engines and IDS systems are case-insensitive, meaning that they treat SQL keywords and operators the same regardless of their case. Therefore, altering the case of SQL statements would not help evade the IDS signature detection, as the IDS would still be able to match the signature of a typical SQL injection pattern3.
• B. Employ IP fragmentation to obscure the attack payload: This option is not applicable because IP fragmentation is a network-level technique that splits IP packets into smaller fragments to fit the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of the network. IP fragmentation does not affect the content or structure of the SQL query, and it does not help evade the IDS signature detection, as the IDS would still be able to reassemble the fragments and match the signature of a typical SQL injection pattern4.
• C. Use Hex encoding to represent the SQL query string: This option is not feasible because Hex encoding is a method of representing binary data in hexadecimal format, such as ‘0x41’ for ‘A’. Hex encoding does not work for SQL queries, as the SQL engine would not be able to interpret the hexadecimal values as valid SQL syntax. Moreover, Hex encoding would not help evade the IDS signature detection, as the IDS would still be able to decode the hexadecimal values and match the signature of a typical SQL injection pattern.

References:

• 1: SQL Injection Evasion Detection - F5
• 2: Mastering SQL Injection with SQLmap: A Comprehensive Evasion Techniques Cheatsheet
• 3: SQL Injection Prevention - OWASP Cheat Sheet Series
• 4: IP Fragmentation - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
• : Hex Encoding - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

Lock-in reflects the inability of the client to migrate from one CSP to another or in-house systems owing to the lack of tools, procedures, standard data formats, applications, and service portability. This threat is related to the inappropriate selection of a CSP, incomplete and non-transparent terms of use, lack of standard mechanisms, etc. (P.2884/2868)

Agent Smith Attack

Agent Smith attacks are carried out by luring victims into downloading and installing malicious

apps designed and published by attackers in the form of games, photo editors, or other

attractive tools from third-party app stores such as 9Apps. Once the user has installed the app,

the core malicious code inside the application infects or replaces the legitimate apps in the

victim's mobile device C&C commands. The deceptive application replaces legitimate apps such

as WhatsApp, SHAREit, and MX Player with similar infected versions. The application sometimes

also appears to be an authentic Google product such as Google Updater or Themes. The

attacker then produces a massive volume of irrelevant and fraudulent advertisements on the

victim's device through the infected app for financial gain. Attackers exploit these apps to steal

critical information such as personal information, credentials, and bank details, from the

victim's mobile device through C&C commands.

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a type of cyberattack that aims to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by flooding it with traffic or requests that consume its resources. A TCP SYN flood attack is a type of DoS attack that exploits the TCP handshake process by sending a large number of SYN requests to the target server, without completing the connection. A UDP flood attack is a type of DoS attack that sends a large number of UDP packets to random ports on the target server, forcing it to check for the application listening at that port and reply with an ICMP packet. An ICMP flood attack is a type of DoS attack that sends a large number of ICMP packets, such as ping requests, to the target server, overwhelming its ICMP processing capacity.

The attacker’s strategy involves a unique mixture of TCP SYN, UDP, and ICMP floods, using ‘r’ packets per second. The server can handle ‘h’ packets per second before it starts showing signs of strain. If ‘r’ surpasses ‘h’, it overwhelms the server, causing it to become unresponsive. The attacker selects ‘r’ as a composite number and ‘h’ as a prime number, making the attack detection more challenging. This is because prime numbers are less predictable and more difficult to factorize than composite numbers, which may hinder the analysis of the attack pattern.

Considering ‘r=2010’ and different values for ‘h’, the scenario that would potentially cause the server to falter is the one where ‘h=1987’ (prime). This is because ‘r’ is greater than ‘h’ by 23 packets per second, which means the server cannot handle the incoming traffic and will eventually run out of resources. The other scenarios would not cause the server to falter, as ‘h’ is either greater than or very close to ‘r’, which means the server can either manage or barely cope with the incoming traffic. References:

• What is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack? | Cloudflare
• Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attack: Examples and Common Targets - Investopedia
• DDoS Attack Types: Glossary of Terms
• What is a Denial of Service (DoS) Attack? | Webopedia

User-directed spidering is a technique that allows the hacker to manually browse the target website and use a proxy or spider tool to capture and analyze the traffic. This way, the hacker can discover hidden or dynamic content that standard web spiders may miss due to a specific file in the root directory, such as robots.txt, that instructs them not to crawl certain pages or directories. User-directed spidering can also help the hacker to bypass authentication or authorization mechanisms, as well as identify vulnerabilities or sensitive information in the target website. User-directed spidering can be performed with tools like Burp Suite and WebScarab, which are web application security testing tools that can intercept, modify, and replay HTTP requests and responses, as well as perform various attacks and scans on the target website.

The other options are not likely to achieve the same results as user-directed spidering. Using Photon to retrieve archived URLs of the target website from archive.org may provide some historical information about the website, but it may not reflect the current state or content of the website. Using the Netcraft tool to gather website information may provide some general information about the website, such as its IP address, domain name, server software, or hosting provider, but it may not reveal the specific files or web pages on the website. Examining HTML source code and cookies may provide some clues about the website’s structure, functionality, or user preferences, but it may not expose the hidden or dynamic content that user-directed spidering can discover. References:

• User Directed Spidering with Burp
• Web Spidering - What Are Web Crawlers & How to Control Them
• Web Security: Recon
• Mapping the Application for Penetrating Web Applications — 1