Q1. Bank of Timbuktu was a medium-sized, regional financial institution in Timbuktu. The bank has deployed a new Internet-accessible Web application recently, using which customers could access their account balances, transfer money between accounts, pay bills and conduct online financial business using a Web browser.
John Stevens was in charge of information security at Bank of Timbuktu. After one month in production, several customers complained about the Internet enabled banking application. Strangely, the account balances of many bank’s customers has been changed!
However, money hadn’t been removed from the bank. Instead, money was transferred between accounts. Given this attack profile, John Stevens reviewed the Web application’s logs and found the following entries:
Attempted login of unknown user: John Attempted login of unknown user: sysaR Attempted login of unknown user: sencat Attempted login of unknown user: pete ‘’; Attempted login of unknown user: ‘ or 1=1--Attempted login of unknown user: ‘; drop table logins--Login of user jason, sessionID= 0x75627578626F6F6B Login of user daniel, sessionID= 0x98627579539E13BE Login of user rebecca, sessionID= 0x90627579944CCB811 Login of user mike, sessionID= 0x9062757935FB5C64 Transfer Funds user jason Pay Bill user mike Logout of user mike
What kind of attack did the Hacker attempt to carry out at the bank? (Choose the best answer)
A. The Hacker attempted SQL Injection technique to gain access to a valid bank login ID.
B. The Hacker attempted Session hijacking, in which the Hacker opened an account with the bank, then logged in to receive a session ID, guessed the next ID and took over Jason’s session.
C. The Hacker attempted a brute force attack to guess login ID and password using password cracking tools.
D. The Hacker used a random generator module to pass results to the Web server and exploited Web application CGI vulnerability.
Answer: A
Explanation: The following part: Attempted login of unknown user: pete ‘’; Attempted login of unknown user: ‘ or 1=1--Attempted login of unknown user: ‘; drop table logins--Clearly shows a hacker trying to perform a SQL injection by bypassing the login with the statement 1=1 and then dumping the logins table.
Q2. What does ICMP (type 11, code 0) denote?
A. Unknown Type
B. Time Exceeded
C. Source Quench
D. Destination Unreachable
Answer: B
Explanation: An ICMP Type 11, Code 0 means Time Exceeded [RFC792], Code 0 = Time to Live exceeded in Transit and Code 1 = Fragment Reassembly Time Exceeded.
Q3. NTP allows you to set the clocks on your systems very accurately, to within 100ms and sometimes-even 10ms. Knowing the exact time is extremely important for enterprise security. Various security protocols depend on an accurate source of time information in order to prevent "playback" attacks. These protocols tag their communications with the current time, to prevent attackers from replaying the same communications, e.g., a login/password interaction or even an entire communication, at a later date. One can circumvent this tagging, if the clock can be set back to the time the communication was recorded. An attacker attempts to try corrupting the clocks on devices on your network. You run Wireshark to detect the NTP traffic to see if there are any irregularities on the network. What port number you should enable in Wireshark display filter to view NTP packets?
A. TCP Port 124
B. UDP Port 125
C. UDP Port 123
D. TCP Port 126
Answer: C
Q4. An Evil Cracker is attempting to penetrate your private network security. To do this, he must not be seen by your IDS, as it may take action to stop him. What tool might he use to bypass the IDS?
Select the best answer.
A. Firewalk
B. Manhunt
C. Fragrouter
D. Fragids
Answer: C
Explanations:
Firewalking is a way to disguise a portscan. Thus, firewalking is not a tool, but a method of conducting a port scan in which it can be hidden from some firewalls. Synamtec Man-Hunt is an IDS, not a tool to evade an IDS. Fragrouter is a tool that can take IP traffic and fragment it into multiple pieces. There is a legitimate reason that fragmentation is done, but it is also a technique that can help an attacker to evade detection while Fragids is a made-up tool and does not exist.
Q5. Bob has set up three web servers on Windows Server 2003 IIS 6.0. Bob has followed all the recommendations for securing the operating system and IIS. These servers are going to run numerous e-commerce websites that are projected to bring in thousands of dollars a day. Bob is still concerned about the security of this server because of the potential for financial loss. Bob has asked his company’s firewall administrator to set the firewall to inspect all incoming traffic on ports 80 and 443 to ensure that no malicious data is getting into the network.
Why will this not be possible?
A. Firewalls can’t inspect traffic coming through port 443
B. Firewalls can only inspect outbound traffic
C. Firewalls can’t inspect traffic coming through port 80
D. Firewalls can’t inspect traffic at all, they can only block or allow certain ports
Answer: D
Explanation: In order to really inspect traffic and traffic patterns you need an IDS.
Q6. Neil is closely monitoring his firewall rules and logs on a regular basis. Some of the users have complained to Neil that there are a few employees who are visiting offensive web site during work hours, without any consideration for others. Neil knows that he has an up-to-date content filtering system and such access should not be authorized. What type of technique might be used by these offenders to access the Internet without restriction?
A. They are using UDP that is always authorized at the firewall
B. They are using HTTP tunneling software that allows them to communicate with protocols in a way it was not intended
C. They have been able to compromise the firewall, modify the rules, and give themselves proper access
D. They are using an older version of Internet Explorer that allow them to bypass the proxy server
Answer: B
Q7. Symmetric encryption algorithms are known to be fast but present great challenges on the key management side. Asymmetric encryption algorithms are slow but allow communication with a remote host without having to transfer a key out of band or in person. If we combine the strength of both crypto systems where we use the symmetric algorithm to encrypt the bulk of the data and then use the asymmetric encryption system to encrypt the symmetric key, what would this type of usage be known as?
A. Symmetric system
B. Combined system
C. Hybrid system
D. Asymmetric system
Answer: C
Explanation: Because of the complexity of the underlying problems, most public-key algorithms involve operations such as modular multiplication and exponentiation, which are much more computationally expensive than the techniques used in most block ciphers, especially with typical key sizes. As a result, public-key cryptosystems are commonly "hybrid" systems, in which a fast symmetric-key encryption algorithm is used for the message itself, while the relevant symmetric key is sent with the message, but encrypted using a public-key algorithm. Similarly, hybrid signature schemes are often used, in which a cryptographic hash function is computed, and only the resulting hash is digitally signed.
Q8. Lori has just been tasked by her supervisor conduct vulnerability scan on the corporate network. She has been instructed to perform a very thorough test of the network to ensure that there are no security holes on any of the machines. Lori’s company does not own any commercial scanning products, so she decides to download a free one off the Internet. Lori has never done a vulnerability scan before, so she is unsure of some of the settings available in the software she downloaded. One of the option is to choose which ports that can be scanned. Lori wants to do exactly what her boos has told her, but she does not know ports should be scanned.
If Lori is supposed to scan all known TCP ports, how many ports should she select in the software?
A. 65536
B. 1024
C. 1025
D. Lori should not scan TCP ports, only UDP ports
Answer: A
Explanation: In both TCP and UDP, each packet header will specify a source port and a destination port, each of which is a 16-bit unsigned integer (i.e. ranging from 0 to 65535).
Q9. What sequence of packets is sent during the initial TCP three-way handshake?
A. SYN, URG, ACK
B. FIN, FIN-ACK, ACK
C. SYN, ACK, SYN-ACK
D. SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK
Answer: D
Explanation: This is referred to as a "three way handshake." The "SYN" flags are requests by the TCP stack at one end of a socket to synchronize themselves to the sequence numbering for this new sessions. The ACK flags acknowlege earlier packets in this session. Obviously only the initial packet has no ACK flag, since there are no previous packets to acknowlege. Only the second packet (the first response from a server to a client) has both the SYN and the ACK bits set.
Q10. Why would you consider sending an email to an address that you know does not exist within the company you are performing a Penetration Test for?
A. To determine who is the holder of the root account
B. To perform a DoS
C. To create needless SPAM
D. To illicit a response back that will reveal information about email servers and how they treat undeliverable mail
E. To test for virus protection
Answer: D
Explanation: Sending a bogus email is one way to find out more about internal servers. Also, to gather additional IP addresses and learn how they treat mail.